Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 29, 1992 TAG: 9203290244
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: F-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By ALAN RIDING
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
But today, if you stand 250 feet above the ground and look northwest, that view has been transformed by the sudden appearance of a strange new city, a city of open-air theaters, ultramodern buildings, artificial lakes, shaded avenues, designer bridges and cable cars that covers 540 acres of the long-verdant Island of Cartuja.
Five years after work began, Expo '92 is a reality. Between April 20 and Oct. 12 this year, the last World's Fair of the 20th century hopes to draw 18 million visitors to a hundred or more national, regional and Staff pavilions as well as to a rich fare of live entertainment that, in true Spanish style, will continue well into the early hours of every morning.
Old Seville, just a 20- to 30-minute walk away, need not feel upstaged. It too has been spruced up for what will be the central event of Spain's Columbus Quincentennial.
It will be host to concerts, operas and plays, while its fine restaurants will offer welcome respite from the faster food of Expo. In any event, once the World's Fair is over, much of the new city will be dismantled. And Seville the eternal will remain.
But for the moment, one month before King Juan Carlos inaugurates the universal exhibition, all eyes are on Expo and its scramble to be ready on time. From afar, it already looks finished. At the site, the bustle continues.
Heavy construction work on most pavilions has been completed, but the time-consuming tasks of decorating interiors, preparing exhibits and applying the final touches will continue up to the last minute.
Inside dusty pavilions, national pride is already astir as architects, engineers, designers and craftsmen busily prepare the image that their countries will show to the world. No one says so openly, of course, but everyone knows they are engaged in a competition in which public attention is the only measure of success.
And a week or two after the opening, the verdict will be in: some pavilions will be mobbed and others will be ignored.
In the end, though, the real winner or loser will be Spain. It has spent $2 billion on Expo's lakes, roads, auditoriums and services as well as on four theme pavilions and its own national pavilion.
It has spent a further $10 billion on related projects - Seville's urban improvement, including construction of eight new bridges over the Guadalquivir, a high-speed train from Madrid and new highways throughout southern Spain.
Yet why bother? That was the question that kept popping into my mind as I looked down from a gently swinging cable car that, with three stops, follows an oblong route over the Expo site. Why bother to invent such a complex and eccentric event?
"Collective madness," was the way Jacinto Pellon put it cheerfully - and as head of the state company in charge of construction, he should know. "It was born at a time of economic euphoria," he went on. "If we started today, it would not be like this. In fact, it probably wouldn't have been started. Now it looks like a sort of utopia."
Well, perhaps world's fairs are meant to be unreal. Certainly there is something theatrical about building a city for a six-month run. Surely it must be unnatural to expect foreign countries - this time, a record 111 nations, compared with 77 at the last World's Fair, in Osaka, Japan, in 1970 - to invest their own money to promote someone else's prestige.
Then you have the result: an eye-crossing hodgepodge of architectural styles that gives many fairs a Disney-like quality. And there is the dubious wisdom of inviting people, in July and August, to melt in the Andalusian summer, when daytime temperatures are often in the 90s in the shade.
Nonetheless, it is happening.
Spain can argue that the Columbus Quincentennial is as good an excuse as will ever be found for a World's Fair. And Seville is the obvious site. Much of the planning for Columbus's trip in 1492 took place in Seville.
When he finally set off, he left from a port not far to the south. For a decade or two after his death, in 1506, he was buried in a monastery on the Island of Cartuja itself. Today it is claimed (a claim challenged by Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, and Havana) that the Admiral's bones lie in Seville Cathedral.
Appropriately, Expo's theme is "The Age of Discoveries." And while Spain will dwell on its own discovery of the Americas, participating governments, Spanish regions, international organizations and a half-dozen private corporations have been asked to focus on what they have contributed - scientifically, socially or culturally - to the world as we know it.
This is a broad mandate and, even though the contents of many pavilions are being kept secret, it is likely to result in a rich variety of exhibits, ranging from Renaissance paintings to high-tech magic.
Spain will set the mood with its four theme pavilions. On the grounds of the newly restored monastery on the Island of Cartuja, the Pavilion of the 15th Century will depict European society at the time of Columbus.
The Pavilion of Navigation will track the great maritime discoveries of the 15th and 16th centuries. The Pavilion of Discovery will trace scientific, industrial and technological innovations over the past 500 years.
The Pavilion of the Future will address the environment, energy, telecommunications and space in four separate buildings. Additionally, the Gardens of the Americas and Nature Pavilion will display the luxuriant botany of the New World.
Because many Third World countries could not afford their own pavilions, Spain has provided special buildings for different regions - Latin America, Africa, the Caribbean, the Arab world and the South Pacific islands. Spain's 17 autonomous regions have built their own pavilions around the new Espana Lake, looking toward Spain's national pavilion, a large white block that at first sight resembles a nuclear reactor.
To ensure that everyone has fun, Spain has organized a stunning calendar of spectacles, some in Seville, but many in Expo itself. With a seating capacity of 5,500, the new open-air auditorium will be kept busiest with a program that includes music and dance for all tastes - from classical and jazz to flamenco and salsa.
The Palenque, a large stylized tent, will hold regular popular dances as well as entertainment linked to the special days that each participating country or organization has been assigned. The United States, for example, has its Expo day on May 17 and Canada on July 1. The Teatro Central will also offer avant-garde theater, music and dance from around the world.
Fun, of course, includes eating. And, for that, there will be something for every taste and pocketbook. No doubt among the most popular, at least at the height of the summer, will be the 40 ice-cream vans, 20 ice-cream stores and 10 fruit-juice stands.
But there will also be 100 restaurants around the site itself, many offering fast-food of the hamburger, pizza and tapas variety, plus restaurants and cafes in the pavilions of many nations that will include their cuisine among their "discoveries." Indeed, a World's Fair is traditionally also a world's menu - everything from French and Hungarian to Mexican and Indonesian dishes.
The real adventure of any World's Fair, though, involves the surprises offered by national pavilions and exhibits. One can only hope that many American visitors - a half-million are expected - will not be disappointed when they visit the U.S. pavilion.
It was originally designed by Barton Myers, but neither Congress nor private corporations came up with enough money to build it. Eventually, with construction far behind schedule, a firm of British architects, Charles Langdon Associates, was called in to adapt Myers's design to a far smaller budget.
Set on one of the largest plots, it now comprises a "wall of water," three metallic "shade sails" representing Columbus's ships, two geodesic domes (with a General Motors-sponsored film in one and a Bill of Rights exhibit in the other), an exhibit organized by Kansas City (Seville's sister city) and a small plaza for shows. Surrounded by finished pavilions, the rush is now on to complete it by April 20.
Judged architecturally, the U.S. pavilion will be facing stiff competition from countries that have invested heavily in more daring and imaginative designs.
Japan's pavilion, said to be the largest wooden construction in the world, evokes a Buddhist temple. Monaco has conceived a walk-through aquarium. Switzerland has built the world's largest paper tower. Mexico's pavilion has a long stone facade that ends in a massive X.
Denmark has come up with something that resembles a metal spaghetto. Hungary's wooded pavilion looks like a beached whale sprouting Transylvanian towers. The Vatican offers a palatial glass and steel pavilion.
While the visual impact of the different styles of so many tightly-packed pavilions can be overwhelming, order is provided by a crisscross of avenues, including five shaded pedestrian ways.
One, the Palm Avenue, will be cooled by a giant bioclimactic sphere and, no doubt, will rapidly become a favorite place to pause. A sense of space, on the other hand, is offered by the area around the Lago de Espana, which is linked to the Guadalquivir by a canal along which shuttle boats will travel.
In the end, though, what matters is what will be inside each pavilion - and in most cases that will only be revealed on opening day. A good many countries will be using state-of-the-art audiovisual techniques to tell their stories. Some will bring originals and reproductions of important works of art.
A few still seem unsure what they will show: the large pavilion built by the Soviet Union will, since subsequent events in Moscow, fly the Russian flag, but it is now having to make room for exhibits from other former Soviet republics.
The Pavilion of Promise is officially Tonga's contribution, but it has been financed by the Mormon Church and will offer an ecumenical exhibit.
With so much to see, visitors who come for only one day will have to be choosy. But there is ample reason to stay longer, not only to enjoy long - and cooler - summer evenings full of entertainment, but also to get to know Seville.
The inauguration of Expo '92 comes immediately after Seville's extraordinary Holy Week processions and celebrations and is followed by the annual Seville Fair, when the bullfighting and flamenco spirit of Andalucia comes alive.
Seville's new opera house, the Teatro de la Maestranza, has a wonderful program of concerts and operas, starting appropriately with Bizet's "Carmen" on April 24 and including many of the world's top singers, soloists, orchestras and conductors.
At the Teatro Lope de Vega, the focus will be on theater classics, works by Ibsen, Calderon de la Barca, Beaumarchais and the like. The Roman ruins of Italica, eight miles outside Seville, will be the site of the city's annual international dance festival.
Even regular visitors to Seville may be surprised by the changes. The Guadalquivir River, which was redirected to reduce flooding in the 19th century, leaving only a canal in front of the city, now again flows through Seville.
Railroad tracks have been removed to turn a four-mile stretch of river bank into landscaped gardens and promenades. New ring roads have been built to reduce downtown traffic and new bridges link the city to the Island of Cartuja. By April 20, the noise and dust of recent years should finally make way for a much-improved city.
Even the narrow streets of Santa Cruz and Macarena, the city's oldest neighborhoods, have been transformed. Dozens of 14th- and 15th-century churches have been renovated, as have many of the ancient palaces that hide behind austere walls.
As money has flowed into Seville, abandoned houses have been turned into expensive apartments. And, more than ever, as spring approaches, windows and balconies explode with flowers. A walk through these streets is a pleasure not to be missed and no particular route need be followed: around every corner, there is always a reason to change direction.
Seville, of course, has certain "must" sights. The cathedral, the third largest in Europe after St. Peter's in Rome and St. Paul's in London, was built on the site of a former Moslem mosque and retained its minaret, albeit with a Christian pinnacle attached.
It contains the supposed tomb of Columbus, while its golden altar is considered the most valuable in Spain. Nearby stands the Alcazar, the palace built by Spain's monarchs on the site of a Moorish palace and, more importantly, preserving the style of Moorish palaces.
Its hand-painted tiles, carved ceilings and plaster filigree are matched only by those of the Alhambra in Granada.
by CNB