Sevilla en junio — Seville in June

Forty degrees, and a city that reorganises itself around it

Seville is one of the hottest cities in Europe and summer there is not a matter of a warm week. Temperatures above forty degrees are normal in July and August, the record is a few degrees higher still, and the heat is dry, relentless and concentrated in a stone city with little wind. Planning a visit for August is a mistake made almost exclusively by foreigners. What is worth understanding is that the city is organised around it rather than defeated by it. The toldos are the visible sign: every summer, canvas awnings are strung between the buildings of the narrow central streets, turning them into shaded corridors, and the difference between a street with toldos and one without is fifteen degrees of felt temperature. Shops close in the early afternoon and reopen around five. Nothing social happens between two and eight. And the evening genuinely starts late — restaurants fill at ten, families with small children are out at eleven, and the terraces stay busy into la madrugada, because those are the only hours when being outside is pleasant. This is the honest answer to the siesta question, and Alex's last line is the point. The siesta as a national nap is largely a cliché, and most Spaniards with office jobs do not take one. What is real is the long midday break and the late schedule that follows from it, and in the south both are a rational response to a climate rather than a cultural quirk. The further north you go the weaker the pattern gets: in Bilbao lunch is shorter and dinner is earlier. One practical note for a learner. Because the social day is displaced, so is the language practice: the useful hours for talking to people in an Andalusian summer are after nine at night. If you are there to improve your Spanish, adjust your sleep rather than your plans.