Expo 92 – Seville

We are taking it a bit easier.  After all this 2022 time traveling in the Old World, cathedrals, palaces, and city walls have lost some luster.  Between past travels to Europe and South America, we have seen so many stone bridges, churches, city walls, and green-carpeted valleys that we have become a bit jaded.  With that said, undoubtedly these ancient buildings, even understanding some that have been restored, added on, and changed several times since their original construction, are magnificent to see.  They have begun to look alike.  And a lush, green alley is always something stirring.  When I see yet another wall or building built centuries ago, I continue to be taken aback.  My heart takes a little leap.  I think about the hands and the labor to build them.  In my mind’s eye I cannot help but wonder . . . what did the grounds look like when this wall was built by the Romans?  Surely there was no stone plaza out front then.  Was it standing in dirt and muck?  How wide and how deep was the moat that now is just a shallow grassy indentation near the wall where people walk their dogs?  What was the distant landscape like?  Where did the peasants live?

The relics are fantastic!  These ancient artifacts from the past are thrilling. They stir the imagination.  While they make us realize how old this world is and how young our own country is, we are ready for new things.

We have an apartment in Seville.  It is in a neighborhood called Tiana on the other side of the Rio Gualquivera from “old town” Seville.  Tiana is on the Isla La Cartuja in the river.  To reach the city we must cross a bridge across the river but it is just a very short walk.  Once a working-class neighborhood, Triana is the focus of urbanization projects.  It is an up-and-coming area with shops, a market, Mercado Tiana, tapas restaurants, and roof-top bars, and home to Seville’s Expo ’92.

Experience has told us when looking for an apartment, it’s not best to stay in City Center. While City Center apartments are convenient, they usually are more expensive, noisy, and older.  Instead, we look for a place to live that is within easy striking distance from the old town or city center but away from all the tourists and hubbub.

We spent one afternoon exploring the very popular site, The Mushroom, across the river in Old Town, but since then we have been exploring our island in the river.  Just across the boulevard from our street, is what we initially thought was a large park.  However, this grand swath of land along the river (530 acres) was home to Seville’s  Expo ’92, called The Age of Discovery.  Over 100 different countries participated in the Expo that celebrated the 500 anniversary of Christopher Columbus’ sailing to the New World from Cadiz.  During the April to October 1992 event, over 48 million people visited the expo.  Well ahead of its time, its primary focus was the future, discovery, science, and technology — from world cultures, and medicine to sea and space exploration.   It was one of the world’s first major expositions to bring light to environmental issues.

When the Expo ended in October 1992, many of the countries dismantled their exhibits and office-building-sized pavilions.  Some countries just walked away and left their pavilion behind.  The place did not die but clearly, it struggles. 

Today these 530 acres are a busy industrial, research, and development park with offices for Microsoft, Oracle, HP, and more.  Big tech!  But in the midst, some of the 1992 buildings remain, abandoned and neglected . . . walking through the streets that in 1992 were like walking the streets of Disney World on New Year’s Eve, it is now quiet.  No one is here.  It is very eerie.  Portions of the framework of the overhead gondola, old escalators, and the monorail track are here.  Streets named Calle de Pasteur, Calle Madam Curie, and Calle Jacques Costeau are here, holding remnants of some countries’ pavilions.  A few fountains still spew water into the air.  As we walked through these places, we felt as if we might b walking through a ghost town or an abandoned movies-set.    I kept repeating “why?”

Some say Expo ‘92 was a folly of a socialist leader who initiated this place only to brag and to line the pockets of his Andalusian cronies.  Some say the event was a tremendous success that spurred growth and tourism in Seville.

I think, all in all, Isla La Cartuja and its Tiana community ultimately benefited from the Expo.  The crumbling La Cartuja Monastery or Monasterio de Santa Maria de las Cuevas, a 15th-century monastery later converted to a ceramics factory with multiple silo-sized kilns was resurrected, and refurbished.  The monastery is now Seville’s leading modern art museum, the Andalusian Centre for Contemporary Art.   And in addition to new office buildings, are still-functioning Expo buildings like a tall lookout tower that stands next to the Pavillion for Navigation on the river and the Isla Magica amusement park.  And only four years ago, the forty-story Seville Tower was completed with its associated Centro Commercial Torre Sevilla.  The rust-colored skyscraper that can be seen from almost any part of Seville and its snazzy ultra-modern shopping mall attracts thousands of shoppers every day.

In addition to the industry and modern commercialism carried on here, the entire site is a popular park with walks, bike paths, and pretty views of the river and Old Town Sevilla.  Yet, the mile-long abandoned parking lot, the shell of an EPCOT globe, and abandoned once spectacular pavilions now grown up with weeds are disturbing.  Some say the citizens of Seville are still paying for Expo 92.

This curious juxtaposition of success and failure seems to invite an in-depth study and possible documentary on how even the grandest initiatives can go wrong.