It’s orange-picking time in Seville. Men in work gloves and hi-viz bibs lean their ladders against the trees and climb up into the dark green leaves. Or they stay at pavement level and pluck the highest fruit with long-handled grabbers. Or they walk about with large plastic baskets as fellow workers drop their bounty from somewhere inside the foliage.
This isn’t in a grove or orchard somewhere beyond the city limits, but in Seville itself, where thousands of orange trees line the main streets and avenues, right there among the boutique shops and cool cafés, as if they were the true residents, out for a stroll in the early-spring sun.
Some of the oranges haven’t waited to be picked and have flung themselves into the gutter or on to the cobbled roads, where they have been squashed underfoot or mushed by passing vehicles. If they were bananas this would be a slapstick-comedy Mecca. Others have become lodged in the tram tracks, where they are given a pulping to end all pulping under the steel wheels. Except for where vendors sell chocolate peanuts or incense wafts from the doors of churches, the perfume of oranges is everywhere. Having seen it all and smelled it all so many times before, the locals appear to take it in their stride, quite literally, sidestepping and swerving the fallen fruit.
For me, the temptation is too great, being hard-wired to kick anything that rolls into my path. On a back alley behind the cathedral, a stray and undamaged orange is absolutely asking to be given the boot, and in a recreation of Norman Whiteside’s 1985 FA Cup-winning goal I cut in from the right then curl a left-footed shot into the far corner, giving the imaginary goalkeeper no chance. The orange makes a satisfying splat against an ancient stone wall. A young kid watching me from an upstairs window goes back into his apartment, having been taught a footballing lesson. Yes, son, that’s how it’s done, watch and learn.
When I ask my handler at the Seville iteration of the Hay Festival why people aren’t collecting the free oranges by the armful she tells me it’s because they’re too bitter. “So what happens to them?” “They’re sold to the English for marmalade.” I’m here for a reading and a gig with my band LYR in a former cannon factory, and it occurs to me that the fruit would make a handy and plentiful missile for an unappreciative audience.
Marmalade. An acquired taste? Jam for grown-ups. I really like it but for some reason never buy it. Even saying the word makes me want to eat it – it sounds so tasty. Marmalade. From the Portuguese, marmelada, but referring to quince. Marmalise, perhaps a portmanteau word coupling marmalade with pulverise. Oranges are usually squeezed or juiced, but the ones in the tram lines were marmalised.
I’ve taken an orange back to my room for closer inspection. It’s not at all round. Quite lumpy, actually. I give it a push and for a moment it seems to set off, then rocks back to its starting place. A bit more of a push and it wobbles forward then slumps to the right, tipping on to its other pole. It’s quite dense, sort of podgy rather than firm in the hand, and reluctant to bounce when dropped on the bedroom floor, the way a squash ball just can’t be arsed. Hats off to a fruit that is 100 per cent synonymous with a colour, though. Oranges are orange, end of story – unlike, say, cherry red or lime green, which require qualification. And unlike orange juice, which is yellow.
With a knife borrowed from the breakfast room I hack it in half and close my eyes. First I breathe in through my nose and infuse my brain with the scent. Then in a self-designed ritual that is part holy communion, part Man from Del Monte advert, and part unofficial naturalisation ceremony, I put the open orange to my tongue and become a Sevillian.
[See also: The changing face of Lent]
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This article appears in the 05 Mar 2025 issue of the New Statesman, The Fall Out