From courtyards green with foliage and littered with oranges comes the trickle of water and the coo of doves

From courtyards green with foliage and littered with oranges comes the trickle of water and the coo of doves.We head back to the centre. Tourists in shady squares are thinking about the first drink of the evening. Horse-and-carriage drivers keep shouting “Hola Carmen!” as they trot past. Right by the Alcazar, we find ourselves on a street called Miguel Ma?, which prompts Carmen to break out into new raptures. “My hero!” she cries, crossing her hands lovingly over her heart, before beginning to tell the tale of her alter ego, that other Sevillian symbol of libertinism – Don Juan, later immortalised by Mozart as Don Giovanni.It is not clear who came first, the historical figure Miguel Ma? or the mythical character Don Juan, who first appeared as El Burlador de Sevilla (“the Seducer of Seville”) in 1630, in a play by the Spanish dramatist Tirso de Molina But either way, sensual Seville was their stage. Both date from the early 17th century; both were licentious but attractive rascals who lived for the day, and had great difficulties remembering about the morrow – not unlike Carmen herself (but very different from Seville’s third operatic child, Figaro, the comic hero of The Barber of Seville and The Marriage of Figaro).Carmen, meanwhile, continues to talk passionately about Miguel Ma?. As a young man, she explains, Ma? had not only ruined the chastity of respectable girls, but also had even taken to murdering their fathers.

Later in life he had done a famous about-turn, becoming a prior and spending his entire fortune on a hospital for the poor Now he is regarded in Seville as something close to a saint. “A little bit of an extremist,” sighs Carmen, as we stroll past the 16th-century former stock exchange, “but a typical son of Seville.”Now she sits us all down in the shadow of the Giralda and begins to sing about the circumstances of how she met Don Jose, her lover in Bizet’s story. She had cut another woman’s face, she calmly explains, after being mocked for her gypsy origins. “And Don Jose was one of those assigned to the job of taking me off to prison!” she adds, with a laugh. “That was how we met!” But before Carmen has time to explain further, the bells of the Giralda start ringing like crazy, swinging and ringing as if there is no tomorrow. The heat is crushing, but the sun has set and a Spanish couple will marry.We walk down towards the river into the old warehouse area that used to back on to the port The poor once teemed here in their thousands.

But Carmen’s beaming smile tells us a story: for here is the grand Hospital of the Caridad, the hospital built on the orders of her old friend Miguel Ma?. And there, in a courtyard opposite, overgrown with roses and long grass, we glimpse a forgotten statue of the man himself.Yet another Sevillian wedding is taking place, just as we try to peer into the famous chapel of the hospital. The guests are in elegant silk and chiffon; we tourists in shorts and sandals But there in the doorway lies the tombstone of Miguel Ma?. Carmen is clapping her hands in joy and exclaiming at the top of her voice, to the consternation of the wedding guests: “He wanted all the world to walk all over him!” But I can’t help wondering if he wasn’t just lobbying for sainthood.