The History of Sex: Seville -- Flamenco and White Slavery -- (Chap. VI, Pt. 15)

Having set the standards for the rest of the world during the Inquisition and launched a mission to save Catholicism under Franco, it seems ironic that Spain should now be so desperate to ape the mores of traditionally Protestant (if largely secular) countries.

Meanwhile, alarmists talk of Muslim immigrants—and Spanish converts—establishing a 'New Al-Andalus' in Spain: the historic stronghold of Granada opened its first mosque since the Reconquest in 2003.

At the turn of the twenty-first century, a Spanish novelist wrote a mock political manifesto outlining how to make Spain 'the most dynamic and innovative service society in the new, global trans-national order:' 

'Spaniards! Those young people who sow their barely adolescent bodies on the curves of our highways every weekend. They're not a problem; they're a solution… Let's not go back to wasting the gold of America… Let's illuminate the world once more with a new Golden Age… Now is the time to convert ourselves into a BROTHEL OF THE DEAD.' 

'I YOU GO AFRICA'

That notion is only slightly more offensive than the real reason I've chosen the Bar Citroën to meet a modern Don Juan.

The bar sits on the corner between Seville's Moorish-style Plaza de España and the family park that hides the spot where the Inquisition used to cremate people alive.

Like the Plaza, the Citroën dates from the Spanish-American Expo of 1929: the small, circular building was actually the carmakers' showroom.

Now a pitstop for tourists and pedestrians, the Citroën was more of a nightspot when Richard Wright came here over half a century ago.

A shady compatriot had offered to show him 'enough flamenco to last you a lifetime' but ended up taking him on a club crawl.

As a black American, the author was surprised to find sevillanas throwing themselves at him, saying: 'I you go Africa.'

Laughing, his guide explained the joke: 'I'm organizing these girls to take them to Africa next week. They think that you are the boss. You see, you are dark. They think you own the cathouses in Casablanca.'

'You mean they want to work in the whorehouses in Africa?'

'They are dying to go. I got the pick of thousands. I can't sleep for the women in Seville begging me to take them to Africa. Two years' work over there and a girl can buy a house in Seville.'

Don't twist my arm:
Contrary to pulp fiction,
Richard Wright found that many sevillanas went willingly