"If a stranger could inspect but one city in Spain and if he wished to acquire therefrom a reasonable comprehension of what the nation as a whole was like, I think he would be well advised to spend his time in Sevilla, for this city, even though it is too individualistic to be called a microcosm of the whole, is nevertheless a good introduction to classical Spanish life. I was familiar with the rest of Spain before I saw Sevilla, but nothing I had learned elsewhere taught me so much about Spanish behaviour. Others have reported a similar experience, for Sevilla does not have ambiente; it is ambiente."

- James A. Michener, Iberia: Spanish Travels and Reflections, 1968, Random House, Inc.

"From my first visit on, simply being in Spain has occasioned in me a kind of joy, a physical tingle, which comes from a whole crop of elements: its light, its landscape, its languages and most of all its human rhythm, a manner of being that graces the place. It comes not from any abstract awareness but from intense particularities: sudden memorable conversations with strangers; the way Spaniards have of imposing human time, so that meals and meetings last as long as they need to. There is a durability about the Spanish people, an acceptance of life that, paradoxically, gives them a keen sense of the present, a gleeful spontaneity. Their own eccentricities make them tolerant of others, which helps them to survive the descent of the tourist hordes. Time spent in the village always serves to unencumber me, to a point where the days seem wondrously long, gifts of time, where the weather simplifies existence to a vocabulary of elemental acts, like drawing water or making fire."

Alastair Reid, Whereabouts: Notes on Being a Foreigner, 1963, North Point Press

"Spain in general and Andalusia in particular teaches us that you can have no real communal life unless you have focal and celebratory events throughout the year, in which the large majority of people in that community participate. That is because the only true basis of community is not supposedly enlightened self-interest but actual shared experience. This is much assisted by the preservation of pre-industrial feasts and saints' days and by a due attention to the rhythms of the seasons."

- Alastair Boyd, The Sierras of the South: Travels in the Mountains of Andalusia, 1992, HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.