The History of Sex: Seville -- Why Men Are Don Juans -- (Chap. VI, Pt. 16)

Wright ended his night with the 'white slave trader' in the bar where I'm sitting now:

'And in each place, he signed up girls to work in the whorehouses of North Africa.'

Now, as with the Inquisition, it's not common knowledge that Seville was a hub of sex trafficking under Franco, with white católicas willingly venturing to Africa to sleep with dark-skinned Muslims.

How many family homes in Seville must have been bought with the proceeds of prostitution? Granny, where were you in the Fifties?

It's not a particularly polite question to ask a proud sevillano.

And anyway, I'm here to find out about Don Juan.

DON JUAN IN THE FLESH

Alfonso Sanchez played the legendary womanizer in a local theatre production that combined three incarnations of the Don on one stage: Molina's hellbound original, the wise-cracking atheist envisaged by Moliere and the most popular version, Jose Zorrilla's religious romantic, a man who's redeemed by the love of a good (Catholic) woman.

In casting the main character, the director told me that her Don Juans had to look like they'd give a girl 'the best sex in the world.'

I'm not the best judge, but Alfonso is dark and bearded, and what he lacks in height he makes up with poise, carrying himself with actorly self regard.

What's more, Alfonso's an actor with a brain.

Alfonso and a musician
outside the historic Bar Citroen

'I had a bit of a phobia about playing Don Juan, because in my life, it's always been present,' he admits. 'My father is a total Don Juan. So I've lived it. And it has its light and dark sides. I was also a little afraid of confronting my own ghosts.'

While we're exorcizing our demons, I suppose I should confess that there was a time when I was called a Don Juan, though it never seemed much of a compliment, mainly because it sounds synonymous with 'male slut.'

After centuries of cogitation about what makes a man a mujeriego—mother issues, arrested development, being an incurable romantic, etcetera—the best reason I've been able to come up with is far more prosaic: Don Juans cheat because they can.

If men weren't indulged as rogues, victims or sex addicts, if they were stigmatized in the same way that—oh, I don't know—'bad' women have been repudiated for ages—well, I reckon the fanciful Don Juan 'gene' would quickly die out.

'THE GREAT TRAGEDY'

Alfonso doesn't disagree with this view, though he reckons there's a strong cultural element to being a Denomination-of-Origin Don.

'In the culture of the south, the myth of Don Juan is ever-present, especially in relationships with women. It turns into a relationship of conquest. Everything is conquest. You go to have a coffee, and you arrive at a moment of conquest. It's as if it makes you more manly—in theory. But it's self-destructive.'

He shakes his head when I mention guides like The Game and its Spanish imitator.

'That's fascinating,' he says. 'It's the opposite of the process I've gone through.'

Instead, he recommends a cure for Don Juanism: playing the Don onstage.

'It forces you to be conscious of your own limitations. Because the things you do without thinking about them, out of a tradition that obliges you to be a Don Juan, or a need for conquest, you realize that isn't the essence of who you are: you're searching for something else.'

'The great tragedy of Don Juan is that he's constantly searching for God—or rather, pure love. And he doesn't find it—until he meets the love of his life.'

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