My Spanish Year

by Ellen M. Whishaw

Triana, the potters’ suburb of Seville from time immemorial, although now to some extent protected by wharves, lies considerably below the level of even a moderate flood. Probably in old times it was all built on galleries and arcades, and even now the main street has ancient arcades on either side for some little distance. The road between has risen so much that one column, perhaps Roman, is only three or four feet high, and when the floods come the water quickly fills the ground-floor rooms to the ceilings. It is possible that this is an actual relic of the “City of the Poles,” although of course rebuilt again and again until only the idea of the primitive part remains.

Triana is always the first quarter to be flooded and the last to be cleared when the river overflows, for the sewer outfalls are below the flood-level, and it seems impossible to close them against the weight of the flood water—moreover, when they are closed, the rain has no outlet and pools in the streets. Some day perhaps the petition of the 10,000 Trianeros, repeated year after year for goodness knows how long, will be attended to by the authorities in Madrid, and then the old river-bed (la madre vieja), which has been silted up for centuries, will be cleared out and used to carry off the flood water. But this obvious remedy has not yet been applied by the wisdom of the Ministers who rule Spain, and the terror that seizes upon all who live below the flood-level when heavy rains set in is a thing to be remembered.

In February 1912 we were living in a modern house in a low-lying part of Seville, some little way from the river. The ground floor of the house had been artificially raised about five feet above the level of the street, but if the river had risen two or three inches above the twenty-seven feet that it had reached the night before it began to go down, the whole street would quickly have been flooded, and we, like Triana, would have had to be fed by boat. All that night a violent thunderstorm raged, to add the finishing touch to our panic; for there was nothing now between Seville and the river save some improvised barriers hastily erected with sixty hours of incessant labour by the soldiers of the garrison, and against these the water was already streaming with force.

But our case, though serious enough, was nothing like so critical as that of many others, for it was at any rate not likely that the water would actually come into our house. A friend of mine, like scores of residents in Seville, has in her house a well of brackish water, and all these wells are fed in some way from the river bed. My friend knows that it is only the walls of the new wharves, built during the last twenty years or so, that keeps her well from overflowing whenever the river rises even a few feet. And once the wells in that part of the town overflow from the river, nothing can check the ingress of the water, for the whole district lies far below flood-level. Day and night for a week she kept on taking soundings, until during the last night, that of the thunderstorm, the water in the well at last began to rise, one metre ... two metres ... three metres.... By daybreak, notwithstanding all her prayers and vows to the Virgin, it was within six feet of the top, and was still rising rapidly.

“And then,” said she, “at the last moment Our Lady answered my prayers.”

The storm ceased, the sun came out, and before the tide turned at midday the flag was flying on the Torre del Oro to tell panic-stricken Seville that the river was going down. Indeed the change came only just in time, for the flood was within an ace of overlapping the frail temporary barriers which alone kept the water out of the main part of the town.

By that time Triana, on the opposite bank, had been for six days under water, with from six to nine feet of it in every single house. The whole of the river valley, from Cordova down to the mouth, was one vast inland sea. In the riverside villages hardly a house was above water. Algaba, the first village above Seville, was entirely submerged, and about 750 out of the 800 inhabitants, having nowhere else to go, were huddled together in the ancient tower which, the villagers say, was built expressly as a refuge when the river rises. Imagine 750 people shut up for a week in one small tower! As soon as it was possible to row against the subsiding stream, I went up with a boat-load of good Samaritans to carry help to some families we knew, and I shall never forget what I saw.

The fields were feet deep in silt, the spring crops ruined, the streets a mass of indescribable filth, the poor cottages, generally trim and sweet with frequent whitewash, were banked up with stinking mud. But the blazing February sun was streaming down on all the misery; gay-coloured clothes, blankets, mats, curtains, beds and bedding, were hung out to dry, the women were all hard at work with their whitewash and scrubbing pails, and an astonishing spirit of courage and philosophy pervaded the whole place.

From the moment they could get across the ferry, three families had been tramping into Seville—about a mile and a half of road, mostly under water—to get rations from the “English” soup kitchen, and it was to verify their incredible tales of distress that we had rowed up.