We both thought that this pub would be a quiet place at eleven in the morning, with no one ordering breakfast or beer, yet we were wrong. The place is packed. As I hurry to get my coffee by the bar, Lito (Alicia’s husband) comes to the rescue and makes room for me next to his wife, who’s been ten minutes in the patio under a spectacular December sun. “What will you have? I’d love to stay, but I got a few things to do, see you guys later”. Well, Alicia, here we are.

My name is Alicia Gil Bernabé and I am a cantaora. I’m very attached to my neighborhood. I was born in Seville on July 31st, 1974. My father is from Triana, and my mother from Tiro de Línea. I grew up in Navisa, across Polígono Sur, and I attended the Cerro del Águila school until I was seven years old. Since then, until the present day, I’ve always lived in Pino Montano, in the north of Seville.

Tell us about your show “Navidad cantaora”, performed in Seville a few weeks ago.

Yes, that was at the Remedios theater. “Navidad cantaora” is a show we’ve been performing for six years. I really wanted to produce a show about Christmas for a long time, re-enacting the atmosphere of the parties in Seville and other towns in the old days. The stage resembles a typical tenement yard in Triana, and with cante, baile and dialogs with a lot of angel, showing how we lived and shared in those days. There are also moving scenes, as we remember our grandparents, the elders, who were the ones who taught us those villancicos so popular through the ages.

You said “in the old days”. What’s happening? Is that way of celebrating Christmas becoming outdated in Seville? 

Sadly, that way of celebrating Christmas no longer exists in the capital of Andalusia, unlike in other cities such as Jerez and Cádiz, where they managed to keep such traditions in much better shape than us. It’s not just Christmas, but the whole lifestyle. Times change, without a doubt. I grew up here in Pino Montano and in the block where I now live there are people that I don’t really know. However, the older people still keep that way of living as neighbors. When I visit my mother, I see that she still has the same neighbors, they still share their things as always.

Are there other cantaores in your family? 

No, there aren’t other cantaores or artists in my family. My father is perhaps the most enthusiastic about flamenco among my relatives, and it’s from him whom I got the flamenco bug. He sings quite well in the style of Toronjo, at home we always listened to Paco Toronjo, for us he’s like a king. May father worked all his life for the ABC newspaper, he was a proof reader, he worked there for forty years. At home, people sing in a whisper, but I’m the only one who became a cantaora. My sisters sing quietly and clap palmas. My father sings those old Villancicos de Sevilla, those beautiful sevillanas… and the fandangos of Toronjo. Although I don’t have fandangos de Huelva in my repertoire, I admit that I love them, particularly if sung by my father or by Paco.

Tell us about that Corral de los Judíos (“Tenement of the Jews”) that your new CD is named after. Did you ever go there?

No, I didn’t have a chance to go there, but my father did. He talks with so much respect about his experiences there that it’s moving. When his grandmother passed away, his grandfather married María, a Gypsy who lived at Cava de Gitanos, in Triana. She was always like a real grandmother for him. He told me how they used to go there to the house of a brother of María on Holy Fridays, in the morning, and the big fuss that would come up as people waited for the procession of the Esperanza de Triana brotherhood. He talks about this with so much love and respect that it’s as if I myself had lived it. This album has a lot of this: seeing Triana through my father’s eyes.

That tenement was located on numbers 82-84 of Castilla Street, just next to Matilde Coral’s academy. When we started to promote the CD, lots of people wrote beautiful things about it in Facebook, such as Antonio Canales, who wrote a comment saying that he used to go play there when he was a kid. I realized that it has a sentimental value not just for me, but for many other people, because this tenement was quite famous in Seville, I wish one day I could sit down with all these people to hear more stories, besides those that my father told me.

The first track in this album, a bulería titled “Huele a mi agüela” (“Smells like mi grandmother”), is a pregónoriginally recited by Antonio Ortega at the church of Valle, before the Christ of the Gypsies. Which grandmother does it refer to?

When I sing it, I think of both my grandmothers, of my own mother, of Carmen, the mother of Lito. These lyrics have a beautiful background, honoring the Gypsy women who were behind the Gypsy men who created the Brotherhood. I’m not part of the Brotherhood, but when I first heard that pregón by Antonio Ortega… It’s a pregón sung por bulerías, we barely changed it, perhaps one little word, but otherwise the pregón remained unchanged. Antonio stands before Nuestro Padre Jesús de la Salud and he starts reciting “huele a mi abuela, huele a tu abuela, huele a su abuela…” (“it smells like my grandmother, it smells like your grandmother, it smells like his grandmother…”), and at this moment he turns to the altar, referring to Him. Anyone who heard this felt something deep inside, at least those of us who were born here. Those references to the coal burners, the black headdress, the socks… it’s all very moving. Now that I’m promoting the album, the first three times I’ve sung it live were very hard for me. I feel very moved when I listen to it.