The building
The Real Maestranza is a first-category ring on the Guadalquivir, in El Arenal. The corporation that owns it, a noble riding order of the sixteenth century, received the royal right to build a permanent plaza in 1730. Wooden rings stood on the same ground first. Stone work began in 1761 under Francisco Sanchez de Aragon and Vicente de San Martin and was not closed until 1881 — a hundred and twenty years of ochavas, pauses for money, and a plan that drifted as it grew. That is why the ring is not a perfect circle.
The Palco del Principe, finished in 1765 for the Infante Felipe, is the royal box. The Puerta del Principe beneath it is the gate a triumphant cuadrilla leaves by — Seville’s equivalent of Madrid’s Puerta Grande. The style is late Sevillian baroque. Capacity is about 12,000. The building is a Bien de Interes Cultural. Inside are the bullfighters’ chapel and a bullfighting museum (the visit is part of the official tour; treat “opened in 1989” as one layer of a collection that is older).
Elizabeth of Austria (“Sissi”) is recorded at a fight in 1861. Juan Carlos and Sofia opened the Fair in 1969. Orson Welles was a familiar face in Andalusian rings; his deeper plaque is in Ronda, not here. The Maestranza has been a film set. The Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz chase is Knight and Day (2010), not “Night and Day” (2009). A fake encierro was shot in the ring. That is cinema, not the Feria.
