Plaza del Pumarejo: The Palace That Became a Kitchen for Many
Why is it significant?
Stand in the middle of this lively little square and look at the long, faded building on one side, with its grand doorway, its iron balconies and its patched-up plaster. Children play, neighbours chat outside the bars, and laundry flutters on the upper floor.
Key Facts
| Place | Plaza del Pumarejo: The Palace That Became a Kitchen for Many |
|---|---|
| Address | Plaza del Pumarejo 3, 41003 Sevilla, Spain |
| Geo Coordinates | 37.40080, -5.98840 |
| Part of Walk | Seville Tapas and Convent Sweets: Hidden Nuns, Old Markets and the Oldest Bar in Town |
| Generated | Generated |
Stand in the middle of this lively little square and look at the long, faded building on one side, with its grand doorway, its iron balconies and its patched-up plaster. Children play, neighbours chat outside the bars, and laundry flutters on the upper floor. That building was built to impress a single family. It ended up feeding dozens.
It is the Casa del Pumarejo, a palace from the last quarter of the eighteenth century. Pedro de Pumarejo was a merchant who grew rich selling goods from the Indies, and when he bought the house in 1775 he had more than seventy surrounding houses pulled down to give it a proper square. The square you are standing in is, quite literally, a rich man's front garden.
Fortunes change. After his death the family sold the house, it became a school, and in 1883 it was turned into a casa de vecinos, a tenement. The upper floor was divided into small homes, the ground floor into workshops and shops. Many families shared one patio, one water source, and very little money... and that is where our food story begins.
In houses like this, the dish of the week was the puchero, a slow stew of chickpeas, a little beef or chicken, bacon, chorizo and black pudding, with whatever vegetables were cheap. One pot, simmered for hours, served in three turns: first the broth, often with a sprig of mint, then the chickpeas and vegetables, and finally the meats. And the next day the leftover meat and fat were shredded together into a rich paste called pringá, pressed into bread and toasted. The montadito de pringá, one of the great tapas of Seville, was born as thrift.
When the old palace was threatened in recent decades, the neighbours organised to save it, and it is now protected as a site of cultural interest and run by a residents' association. A house of the rich, then of the poor, now of the barrio. Walk west along Calle Relator and turn left into Calle Feria, where every Thursday Seville holds its oldest market.