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36 DAYS IN THE SUN
is the challenge of their bearing. They pick up little
naked children, kiss them all over their bodies and
hand them about from arm to arm. At the sight of a
handsome man they will gnash their teeth passionately
—but they will sling mud at a beautiful woman.
These are las cigarreras, the tobacco workers, the
soul of Seville. They constitute an army of about five
thousand, whose oldest member is past a century; the
youngest, fourteen.
When speaking to strangers, the Sevillano passes
lightly over the tobacco girl, but in the depth of his
heart he admires and worships her with a sort of com-
placent awe. She is care-free, naughty, godless; she is
ruthless in her passion, witty, mobile of mind, skillful;
she is the incarnation of all the frivolous qualities of
the city, elevated to the nth degree. The Sevillano
could not deny her without casting a stone at his own
house, and no Spaniard would do that.
In his innermost spirit, every serious Spaniard is
filled with the conviction that revolution is the only
solution for anything, and he feels keenly the disgrace
of continuing to stagnate in inactivity. But thanks to
the tobacco girl, Seville has no need to be so much
ashamed of itself. The tobacco worker is always ready
for an insurrection; it is her hand that throws the
first stone; it is her mouth that utters the kindling cry
of battle. She is the bubbling spirit of unrest, the
provocative element of disturbance within the state.
And whenever the cork pops out, it is she that serves
both as the report and the foam; she is everything that
is terrifying to women and delightful to men.
When Alfonso XII visited Seville about forty years
ago, and the republican population of the city, filled
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