plaza Jesús de la Pasión/Plaza del Pan - Seville

The oldest known name for this area is Plaza de San Salvador , after the nearby church. The two places in front of and behind the church were therefore given the same name. To distinguish them from each other, the place referred to here was called Abajo de San Salvador . In the 17th century it became known as the Plaza del Pan (Bread Square) , because of the many stalls selling this product.

In 1914, at the request of the parishioners of the neighboring parish, the city council renamed it Jesús de la Pasión, and although there were protests from shopkeepers about the name change, these did not catch on. With the advent of the Second Republic it returned to its traditional name Pan and Franco's victory in 1939 brought the official name Jesús de la Pasión to the present day. Despite this, the public and many literary texts continue to call it Plaza del Pan.

During the Almohad period, the Plaza del Pan was part of the souk of the Mosque of Ibn Adabbas (located in the current Church of El Salvador), which also occupied the Plaza del Salvador and the Alfalfa. Foods such as fish, bread and vegetables were sold at this market. In 1172, the Mosque of Alhama was built on the site where the cathedral now stands. With this new construction, Ibn Adabbas' alcaicería lost its commercial precedence, although it remained an important trading center for the city. After the conquest of Seville by the Crown of Castile in 1248, the commercial and artisanal use of this area continued. In some cases the tradition has survived to this day, such as the shoemakers' guild in neighboring Calle Córdoba.

In the mid-19th century , the bread and food market moved to the nearby Plaza de la Encarnación . The arrival of the 20th century brought to this square and its surroundings the image of the Galician and mountain porters who transported goods and whose figure is recorded in the writings of the poets Luis Cernuda and Rafael Laffón.

The car-free square is trapezoidal. The north side is occupied by the building of the former Pedro Roldán textile warehouses , a regionalist style work from 1926 designed by the Sevillian architect José Espiau y Muñoz. The western front, which is the most important for stylistic and historical reasons, corresponds to the rear of the Church of El Salvador, which originally housed the bread stalls that gave the square its name and which is now occupied by small shops located under brick arcades are attached to the wall of the church, each shop occupying one of the arches behind which the church rises to different heights.

The first building on the east side dates from the 18th century . The ground floor housed a hardware store and is now a private house, although a large ceramic sign from the old store still hangs there.

Willem Vandenameele