Plaza de España

Interesting facts

The two towers that close the arms of the half-ellipse each rise about 70 metres.

Above the provincial benches runs a row of 52 ceramic medallions with relief portraits of illustrious figures from Spanish history.

The 1914 budget was about 628,500 pesetas; by 1929 the final bill had passed 15 million pesetas, and over 17 million with extras.

Seville itself has no bench of its own among the 48 provincial alcoves, which are arranged in four sections of twelve.

During the Spanish Civil War, rooms in the basement of the building were used as prisons.

The central building has housed the Spanish Army's Land Force Headquarters since 2005, while the towers hold central government offices for Andalusia and Seville.

A restoration from 2002 to 2010 replaced almost a quarter of the tiles on the provincial benches and most of the ceramic balustrades.

The canal in front of the building is about 15 metres wide, and its water is recycled to irrigate the surrounding park.

In October 2018 the Spanish Council of Ministers held one of its meetings in the building.

Beyond the big films, the square has appeared in Simply Red's video for Something Got Me Started and in the Netflix series Kaos.

Why it is worth it

Seville built the Plaza de España to impress the Spanish-speaking world, and a century later it still does. It was the showpiece of the Ibero-American Exposition of 1929, laid out on the edge of the María Luisa Park by the Sevillian architect Aníbal González, who began work in 1914. When he left the project in 1926 others carried it to completion, among them Vicente Traver, and the ensemble was inaugurated in the spring of 1929. The result is a vast half-ellipse of exposed brick opening towards the park, covering around five hectares, its two arms ending in tall towers that give the whole a baroque silhouette.

The style is Spanish Regionalism at full volume — Renaissance and Baroque revival, neo-Mudéjar brickwork and a touch of the 1920s mixed without apology — but the real subject is Seville's own ceramics. Along the foot of the building run 48 tiled alcoves with benches, one for each of the other Spanish provinces in alphabetical order, each with a map, the provincial arms and a painted scene from its history; people still hunt for their home province and sit in it for a photograph. Above them a row of ceramic medallions shows figures from Spanish history, and glazed tiles cover balustrades, lamp posts and handrails.

In front of the curve runs a canal about half a kilometre long, spanned by four bridges said to stand for the old kingdoms of Castile, León, Aragón and Navarre, with a fountain at the centre of the square. The set has been irresistible to film-makers: it appears in Lawrence of Arabia, in Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones and in The Dictator. The building has never been a museum piece; its halls are still used by government and army offices, which keeps the square a working part of the city rather than a stage flat.

Getting there

The plaza is in the María Luisa Park, about 1.4 km from the centre of Seville, and roughly 9.5 km from Seville Airport (SVQ). The nearest public-transport stop is Prado de San Sebastián, an interchange of metro line 1 and the T1 tram, about seven minutes' walk away; from the cathedral area it is an easy walk through the park. The square itself is open ground.

Plan your visit

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From the encyclopaedia

The Plaza de España is a plaza in Maria Luisa Park in Seville, Spain. It was built in 1928 for the Ibero-American Exposition of 1929. It is a landmark example of Regionalism Architecture, mixing elements of the Baroque Revival, Renaissance Revival and Moorish Revival (Neo-Mudéjar) styles of Spanish architecture.

Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Interesting facts

Why it is worth it

Getting there

Plan your visit

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From the encyclopaedia