To quote Edwidge Danticat's Krik?Krak! “Something is always in the last place you look, because once you find it, you stop looking.”
I had a lovely day finding nothing in
the archives yesterday, going first to the university's facultad
de filología, as recommended by
the friendly archivists as the university's archivo
histórico. The facultad
de filología is located in the
old tabacalera
building, a lovely seventeenth century pile of sun-paled stone, set
around a series of courtyards. It's a pretty standard stop on the
tourist itinerary, and indeed a sign in English, French, and Spanish
advises visitors that free audio guides are available just past the
entrance. I ignored the audio guides and headed straight for the
conserjería, where I
got directions to the “secretaria”
of the facultad de filología,
and then headed through the courtyards decorated with neo-classical
statues and fountains, and old signs from the tobacco factory
(“Inspección de Talleres” read an archaic sign above a more
modern one for restrooms), and where gracious stone arches were
discreetly fitted with glass doors to set off important things like
the student cafeteria.
![]() |
Students in the main building of the Universidad de Sevilla |
Then I turned off
the last courtyard and headed down a hallway where marble gave way to
tile and then eventually to linoleum to find a little window
(ironically dedicated to Erasmus students) where I offered my
somewhat involved explanation of what I was looking for to a young
woman who was probably the equivalent of a work study student, and
who was clearly used to answering questions about registration and
exams. She looked amiable but puzzled and then asked me to wait a
minute.
![]() |
The filología (modern languages) wing off the pretty courtyard. Secretaría at the end of the hall. |
Then
she went and got a grown up, and I explained what I was looking for
to him,
adding that the university archive people had sent me to the
department thinking that perhaps they had their own records. He
invited me to come around the corner from the window to actually walk
into the secretaria
office (step one! Foot in the door, literally!) and then presented
me to an older gentleman saying that if anyone could help me it would
be his “compañero.”
I explained what I was looking for a third time, and the third
person said that the department didn't keep records from the sixties,
because they hadn't been the facultad
de filología in
those days, they had been filosofía
y letras,
and their records had either been transferred to the university
archive in the library or destroyed after the departmental
reorganization in the seventies. But if the person I was looking for
had taught English (he guessed correctly after hearing her name) then
there were two English departments now, language and literature, and
if I wanted I could go upstairs to the English language department
and talk to their
secretary,
and perhaps there would be older professors who might remember the
person I was looking for.
![]() |
Studying under the skylights by the department of lengua inglesa |
Accordingly,
I thanked him and went up the marble staircase to a lovely open are
under a courtyard closed in by colored glass which allowed for
stained glass lights on the study carrels where various students were
perched with their books, preparing for exams. It is really amazing
how much friendlier a space the university of Seville is than the
Complutense. In terms of cities to live, I'd pick Madrid over
Seville, easily. But in terms of physical environments to work, the
university of Seville is in a different league
from
the Complutense.
![]() | |
Student activities: strikes, demonstrations, and Italian classes |
And – to paraphrase Yeats – how but in custom
and in ceremony are naive and righteous indignation born? The
Complutense has mostly apolitical graffiti over things, varied by the
occasional political grafitti, but generally looking simply scruffy.
The facultad of
the University of Seville is immaculate in its historical building
filled with tourists, but there are posters everywhere proclaiming
demonstrations in favor of public education, against exploitation of
adjunct professors, and all sorts of other good causes, none of them
spray painted (that would
be
vandalism in such a lovely setting) but with flyers and banners and
so on. (Of course, it could also be the six thousand American
exchange students I learned inhabit the university here, who bring a
tradition of activism fueled less by long simmering rage and more by
naive shock that all may not be for the best and in the best of all
possible worlds which I recognize more easily because it's more
familiar.)
![]() |
Some stuff on the grad students minds |
![]() |
And some evidence of caring about something immediately beyond themselves. (Namely their recent baby selves, which is almost as important.) |
Once
again I headed away from the formal and elegant study spaces into the
narrower corridors, until I found the inevitable, linoleum-tiled,
low-ceilinged, windowless hallway with an industrial copy machine
saying “Introduce Code to Make a Copy” on the screen that exists
in every English department everywhere, and a bunch of doors with
name tags and little postcards about conferences taped to the doors
with slightly peeling tape. Feeling right at home, I identified the
door labeled secretaria,
where someone had scotch-taped a strip of paper with a computer
printed note on it which said:
Debido al
volumen de tareas en estos momentos, la secretaria atenderá a
peticiones entre 11:00 y 13:00.
It was at that point just before noon, so I was technically in the
middle of office hours, but the door was very definitely closed, and
I could hear a voice on the other end in what seemed like a rather
involved phone conversation (it was hard to tell through the door and
with only one side of the conversation, but I think it was about
scheduling). I settled down to wait.
After
20 minutes I calculated the likelihood that the person behind the
door would (a)be off the phone before 1:00 PM, and (b) not
immediately have something else to do and (c)therefore be willing to
listen to a person who was not a student or faculty member who was
making an odd and unusual request for which the easiest response
would be “no.” The odds of all three of these things happening
(plus of course the possibility of the department actually having
anything) seemed to me to be a limit approaching zero, so I conceded
defeat and left without speaking to the secretary of the English
language department, which is an outgrowth of the facultad
de filología which was
once filosofía y letras.
I admit defeat.
As
it was still only 12:15, I put phase two of my plan into action, and
headed back to the Archivo de Indias, where after duly putting my bag
through a metal detector and being asked if I was there “para
investigar” by the
alert security guard (who must get tired of directing lost tourists
to the museum across the way all day), I headed up the stairs to the
first floor where I met with a reference librarian and explained (for
a change) that I was not so much interested in the collection (though
it doubtless is interesting), but rather in whether they kept any
records of people who had visited
the collection, as I was
specifically researching someone who had spent time working there
almost one hundred years ago, in the early 1920s. “Uff, one
hundred years ago, no I don't think so,” he said instantly. “¿Es
famoso, o qué?” I
explained that yes, Arthur Schomburg was “famoso”
in certain circles, namely those in African American studies, as he
was one of the first to research the roots of the trans-Atlantic
slave trade seriously. “Vamos,
un pionero, entiendo,”
the librarian said sympathetically, before going on to explain (with
apologies) that their records for this century are digitized, but
that the preceding century had been periodically “recycled” (i.e.
shredded) “because otherwise we wouldn't have space for any other
documents.” As I know very well no one gets into a Spanish archive
without providing passport of DNI, and filling out a little
information sheet, and in the municipal archives you have to fill out
your name and contact details and the date along with every
request for a folder that you make,
so I could easily see his point. I'm glad to know that all of the
time spent filling out call slips and information sheets will not
make this blog useless to future generations, since I suspect
(computerized or no in theory) that most of the information they
collect on researchers goes straight into a circular file. (I could
have tested it by checking their computerized records for some of my
fellow Fulbrighters who I know have been working there, but that
would have been weird and creepy, so I didn't.)
In
any case, the Archivo de
las Indias has nothing
on Arthur Schomburg's pioneering research stay there. I'm saddened,
but not surprised. In a way, I feel as if this validates my project
a little, since it's quite natural and easy to focus on preserving
the oldest and what seem like rarest documents if you have them, so I
completely understand archivists in Seville working on preserving
their collections from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. But
the twentieth century is the black hole into which collections which
are not old enough to be “interesting” and not young enough to be
digital fall. So perhaps it's worthwhile to try to work on
remembering it while still possible.
Having
gotten that out of the way, I headed quickly past the Cathedral and
down the Calle Sierpes to meet up with the Calle Almirante Apodaca
(you can look on Google maps if you're interested), past the shoe
store selling very reasonably priced alpargatas
that I heroically did
not buy (though the weather is finally
getting warm enough that
they might be conceivably useful) to the municipal archive again,
where the nice people at the hemeroteca
had suggested that I
meet with Rafael el Bibliotecario. My first meeting was in fact with
a blond woman in a white coat, who recognized me from my preceding
adventures there, and asked kindly how she could help me this time.
I had a plan of attack worked out, and asked for the índices
callejeros for the
alternate years Dorothy Peterson had spent in Seville, hoping to find
another certificate of empadronamiento, to perhaps confirm what year
she left Spain, and find further evidence of her apartments in Spain
besides her letters to repeat my Monday triumph.
Then
I hit another snag. They only have the índices from 1960 and 1965,
because between that time they only did rectificaciones,
and 1970 is probably too late. I must have looked somewhat sad and
flummoxed, because the archivist said “here, let me give you a list
of all the topics we have information on in alphabetical order, and
you can look at that and decide what collections would be useful”
and handed me another slim, leather bound volume. Offering thanks
which really did not convey the depth of my gratitude, I took the
book and settled down to read all the file headings preserved in
Seville's municipal archives from Abastecimiento
de agua to Zócalos.
Sadly, extranjeros
(the only heading which struck me as useful) only had information
from 1859 to 1874. Even more sadly, I found a ton of information (or
at least useful topic headings) for something which a fellow
Fulbrighter is researching. She hasn't been to Sevilla, and is
leaving Spain at the end of this week, and was deeply frustrated when
I sent her a series of texts while she was working at the BNE. (Her
interest is epidemics and public health ordinances in the nineteenth
century, and she was so jealous she threatened to block me as a
WhatsApp contact if I didn't stop telling her about all the folders
full of documents about “animales
dañinos,” “cólera,”
“difteria,”
“fiebre amarilla,”
and “perros vagabundos
y rabiosos Véase hidrofobia y matanza de perros.”)
However, while it was nice to find something of use to someone else,
there was alas almost nothing of the twentieth century of use to me.
(This makes me suspect that it might be back at the Archivo
General de Administración in
Alcalá de Henares. Virtues and annoyances of centralization.)
After apologetically handing back the volume and saying there was
nothing there of use, and thanking the archivist again, and doing the
same thing with a slim little book which was “an overview of the
municipal archives” which she then offered me, she trotted off to
get Rafael the librarian, her professional pride evidently hurt by
not being able to offer any folders. (Or else I just looked very
pathetic and discouraged.)
Rafael
greeted me with the friendly but anxious smile of someone who is
thinking “I don't think
we've been introduced, and I can't place you, but I know I've seen
you wandering around the building before, so maybe I'm supposed to
know who you are and what you want.”
After I explained my Peterson quest (yet again), he relaxed into a
real smile, and seated himself in front of his computer and promptly
went to work googling. I had to explain about Dorothy Peterson the
Swedish-American movie actor from the same time period, who screws up
all google searches, and direct him toward the correct Dorothy
Peterson, and then I offered what I had found already, and chatted a
little bit, explaining that I had been to the university archives and
they had directed me to the facultad
de filología, but that
I wasn't really sure how involved Peterson had been with the
university, etc. etc. Rafael was busily tapping through various
university library catalogs, in both Seville and nation-wide, which I
technically have access to, but know a lot less well (and the keyword
things are always a bit weird given a foreign language and sub-ideal
software and user interface). He didn't find anything (which didn't
surprise me), but he did
sit back and say
finally. “Well, the head of the English department at the
university a usuario
of the archives here, and very pleasant. You could get in touch with
him. And there's also the CentroNorteamericano de Sevilla
in the Calle Harinas. Do you know where that is? It's right by the
Cathedral, in the zona
monumental. Anyway, the
Centro Norteamericano has been around since the 1960s, I think, and
it was a kind of social center for Americans in Sevilla, as well as
offering English language classes. So this woman might well have
been involved there. They might have a library and archives. And
even if not, it was founded by una
señora...I can't
remember her name now, pero
una señora muy mayor,
who lives in an apartment above the Centro. (It's in an old building
in the city center. Very pretty.) So if you go to the Centro and
ask them, and maybe ask to speak to the director, she might be able
to help you.”
While saying all of this he was googling away, and found the Centro
Norteamericano's website with no difficulty, although he was
disappointed that the “¿Quiénes Somos?” and “Contacto”
pages did not list the director/founder's name, but only those of the
current teaching staff. He was pleased to see that the Center listed
its activities as “since 1958,” since I had explained that
Peterson came to Sevilla in 1959, which is certainly a nice
coincidence.
By that point it was nearly two, and I was hungry and didn't feel
like going through newspapers on a wild goose chase, so I thanked
both Rafael and his colleague again profusely, and said I would
follow their leads, and then left to find a place to have lunch.
After lunch, and a nice nap at the hotel (necessary with all this
getting up early, and possibly the fact that I checked out a crappy
fantasy novel from the NYPL online and read it until too late the
night before), I pulled myself together and headed back to the
university historical archive, to look at the very last file I had
noted as being possibly of interest in their charming card
catalogues.
I
was greeted by name and in English and practically with hugs by the
red-headed librarian, who exclaimed at how late I was (it was after
eight), and said she had despaired of seeing me that day, and
presented me to her colleague who had met me on Monday. They both
asked with mock sternness if I had “hecho
mis deberes” and gone
to check out the facultad
de filología. I
explained that I had, but had hit a dead end, but had only one
more file I wanted to
look at and that I promised I wouldn't keep them late until 9:00
(when they officially close). After assuring me that it was no
trouble they promptly provided the two folders in the one gigantic
file, a list of appointments of “colaboradores”
(I think the rough equivalent would be adjuncts) for the 1972-73
school year for the facultad
de filosofía y letras.
It
would have been exactly the information I was looking for, had it
been for the 1966-67 school year instead. (Of course that one's not
in the files.) On the upside, I got to read the contracts of
employment for various language teachers (including English
teachers), and I now have a good idea of a value in pesetas
of what Peterson meant
when she wrote that the university was “the worst paid job she'd
ever had.”
Sadly, no Peterson. But the university archive librarians hugged me
and kissed me on both cheeks when I left, and wished me luck, and I
promised to send them a copy of my thesis if it's ever published as a
book. I'm thinking the acknowledgements list is going to be long
now, and that I should have asked people's names because there are so
many people who have been so kind.
I
collapsed yesterday evening with the sense that I had checked a lot
of things off the list, and done my best. Thursday, my last day in
Sevilla, I decided would be devoted to a day of tourism, rather than
trying fruitlessly to track down the English department of the
facultad de filología
formerly known as
filosofía y letras.
To satisfy my conscience, I decided to take my good camera (not my
phone) and take pictures of the three addresses that Dorothy Peterson
lived at in Sevilla, to have them to accompany my notes based on her
empadronamiento, and to stop in at the “Centro Norteamericano,”
which I suspected (correctly) to be like the International Institute
in Madrid, a once odd project of fanatical American ladies, but now
simply a private language school offering English to Spaniards and
Spanish to Americans.
Accordingly,
I packed up and checked out in a reasonably leisurely fashion,
stopped for coffee and a pastry at a handy cafe, and then wandered
happily through the sunshine (it was so nice to be able to wear
shorts finally, although I'm afraid I'll be back to jeans in Madrid,
if the forecast is accurate). I followed the address notes I had
taken, and google maps on my phone, and snapped pictures and felt
like a tourist and was happy. I found the Centro Norteamericano,
closer to the river than I'd been all this trip in Sevilla, two
gracious old houses with tiled courtyard and fountain knocked into
one. I made my way around the group of middle aged American ladies
who were being taken on some kind of tour by a Spanish guide, and
headed over to where a cheerful young woman at recepción
welcomed me and asked
how she could help. I think she thought that my hesitant ¿Cómo
explicar? was a lack of
trust in my language abilities, not a way of marshaling the series of
facts for the rather bizarre request I've made so often lately. In
any case, she relaxed considerably when I explained myself in
Spanish, and then said apologetically. “El
caso es que no tenemos archivo, ni nada.”
I nodded, already expecting the answer, and then – with the
genuine desire to be helpful which has marked nearly everyone I've
talked to in Sevilla – she added. “But if you leave your name
and phone number, and the name of the woman you're researching I can
give it to the director. She's been here a long time and she might
know something.” Pleased that I would be able to take Rafael the
Librarian's advice (since I felt guilty about not doing my deberes
thoroughly enough for the ladies at the university archive), I very
carefully printed my full name and phone number on a post it, along
with my email, although I suspected that given the probable age of
the director, a phone number was requested for a reason. Then I
carefully wrote a note explaining that I was researching Dorothy
Peterson's stay in Spain between 1959 and 1968. Then I thanked the
girl at recepción again,
and chatted a little, explaining that I was doing a thesis about
various writers, but that she was the most forgotten because she had
published least, perhaps because she had faced some sexism and that I
was hoping to do a revindicación
of her work because I
felt she was unjustly overlooked. (Spaniards love discussing the
injustices of sexism. It is an invariable sympathetic opening,
especially with young women. In this instance I think it happens to
also be true.) Then she wished me luck and promised to pass along
the post it note, and then I left.
Entry way of the Centro Norteamericano de Sevilla, Calle de Harinas 16 |
I
plugged the next address into my phone, and realized that it took me
across the river, to the “Barrio Remedios,” which Dorothy
Peterson described as brand new and “very cosmopolitan” in 1960,
not least because it had “the only Chinese restaurant in Seville.”
(My feeling about having to live near a Chinese restaurant even when
you're being an expatriate is that it proves that you can take the
girl out of New York, but you can't take New York out of the girl.
Sometimes you just need comfort take-out.) When I was searching for
Dorothy Peterson's empadronamiento
for this neighborhood I
didn't find it (she moved right at the end of the year, around the
time the census was taken), but I did
find that the block she
lived on was full of other Americans (at least ten families, which
would have been unusual at the time, I think, though now the city is
absolutely stuffed to the gills with my compatriots, partly the six
thousand American students Rafael the Librarian mentioned, and all
their loving families who visit them, and partly doubtless overflow
from the still active bases in Rota and Morón de la Frontera.).
Observing the address (it's on the Calle Asunción), it's not hard to
see why it was an expatriate community in 1960. For one thing, the
buildings were all new, which meant new plumbing and hot water and so
on. For another, while it's really right across the river and only
about a half hour walk from the absolute city center, that would have
been considered quite a distance outside of town when the city was
less built up, and I suspect that only Americans had the horrible
suburban impulse. Spaniards who had a choice would have preferred to
live in the city center, and Spaniards who didn't have a choice would
have been too poor for what was obviously planned as an upscale
suburb. The streets are wide and straight, and laid out in as strict
a grid as the curve of the river allows. (And now, bless them, the
very wide straight shopping street of the Calle Asunción has a wide
two way bicycle lane and is otherwise completely pedestrian. If
anyone has ever doubted or wondered what a truly pedestrian avenue in
New York City would look like, not just closed for a street fair but
permanently closed to traffic, look at the Calle Asunción, with its
wide bicycle lanes, nice benches at intervals, and people up and down
the rest of its width and going shopping. Traffic moves on the
through streets, and there are the retractable bollards so that I
suspect trucks get through with deliveries for the stores at night,
but during the day it's absolutely lovely.) In other words, the
Barrio Remedios is about as far from the narrow, twisty, picturesque
city center of Sevilla conceptually as it's possible to get. I loved
it. (Sevilla is
stunningly beautiful.
But it's also so quaint it makes my teeth hurt. If Bruges is
gingerbread houses, Sevilla is marzipan houses. I need a city with
some substance that's not just empty calories.)
The Calle Asunción: a wide, straight, street originally (optimistically) built for cars, and now bikes only. The dream is real. |
After
wandering along the Calle Asunción, and feeling generally cheerful
about life, as one generally does on a prosperous bourgeois shopping
street, filled with people on a warm, sunny day, I headed south to my
final address, which brought me across the river again and (had I
bothered to check it earlier) to within a stone's throw of the
university's beautiful new library and historical archive. I was
just approaching the Puente
de Remedios to re-cross
the river when, to my surprise, my phone rang. Not buzzed, for a
received email, or bonged for a received text message: rang.
Someone was calling me. A quick glance showed an unknown but local
number.
Torn
between hope and fear of a sales call I picked it up and said “¿sí?”
and an English speaking voice on the other end said “Rebecca?”
After going back and forth a bit until we settled on English as a
language and I found a quiet corner away from the traffic noise of
the bridge where I could hear properly, a woman's voice said. “My
name is Barbara. I'm calling because I got a message that you were
interested in researching Dorothy Peterson. Dorothy Peterson was a
friend of mine. I'm going to a concert this evening actually with
someone who knew her quite a bit better than I did, because she was
part of a women's club with Dorothy that I didn't belong to. I can
ask her what she remembers too, because you know age does bad things
to the brain.”
For
faithful blog readers who have read Javier Cercas's novel Soldados
de Salamina, this was
the moment when the narrator hears a voice over the phone that says: “Miralles
al aparato.” For
Hobbit-geeks, this is Durin's Day. This was the supreme Moment of Coolness.
I managed to not fall over, and to profusely express my appreciation,
and explain a little about my project. I also was tremendously sad
about leaving Sevilla this evening, as I totally would have met the
ladies and invited them to a drink or coffee either before or after
their concert to ask for information. But alas, I was leaving
Sevilla, and I was unprepared to conduct an interview on the spur of
the moment over the phone. I offered to return to Sevilla next week
(damn the expense, it's worth it), but I think probably we'll end up
speaking by phone, either next week or when Barbara returns to the US
for the summer, and when I have a nice list of questions typed up and
ready to go. I don't know what (if anything) I'll find of interest.
But in keeping with the theme of people really going above and beyond
to help out in Sevilla, Barbara said, “Oh, I knew someone who was
close to her in Sevilla and then lived in Massachusetts near her when
she was living there before she died. She lives in Alabama now.
I'll try to get in touch with her.”
I
was still in a public place when I hung up the phone after our brief
conversation, so I did not
jump up and down and
squeal (though I honestly told Barbara that she'd made my day). But
I will do an electronic jumping up and down and squealing now. OMG.
OMG. OMG. BEST. FULBRIGHT RESEARCH EXPERIENCE. EVER. I know I
shouldn't get my hopes up. It's not a lost manuscript (even of an
article). In terms of literary criticism, it may not even be that
interesting. But I feel as if Dorothy Peterson has suddenly become
real in
a way that my other authors haven't quite. And I do
hope that I get to talk
at more length with Barbara (and perhaps her friends who also knew
Dorothy Peterson) and learn a bit more about her life in Spain, and
perhaps even more importantly the ways she taught Spanish to
Americans, which made her a conduit for Spanish culture in the US.
I
really need to learn to be less excited about very basic detective
work. But (as a faithful blog reader who I texted a small squeal to
pointed out), at least this is a kind of detective work that hurts no
one. And I think an interview plus
an empadronamiento
amply justifies both my trip to Sevilla and my Fulbright in general.
And it's true, you always do find something in the last place you
look. Even if you were about to stop looking anyway.
All in all, it's been a good day.
Wow, this is amazing! (I am catching up on things). Here is my one piece of serious serious advice, learned the hard way: Talk to them as soon as you can. Don't wait! At least a first conversation. Things happen.
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