There are places in the cities that only accept visits in memory. Thus the projects that did not see the light or those that were erected to disappear with the same diligence. That nostalgia awakened by the ephemeral pavilions of Expo 92 or the covers of the fair. Above the latter there is an extinct structure that gives rise to this tradition of welcoming visitors to the Real and that could have become an iconic monument: the Pasarela or Pasadera de Sevilla.
The first façade of the Seville Fair
Erected in Seville in the late 19th century, it stood next to the Prado de San Sebastián between 1896 and 1920. An iron tower inspired by the Eiffel Tower in Paris dominated this environment and became an indispensable element of the spring festivities.
In fact, its inauguration coincided with the first day of the fair: April 18, 1896.
The industrial engineer Dionisio Pérez Tobía devised this historic emblem that the Perea brothers built in their foundry, according to anthropologist Salvador Rodríguez Becerra.
Why was the footbridge demolished?
In 1920 the decision was made to demolish the Pasarela. The official version, since mystery has surrounded its demolition, defended that it was necessary to “free the urban space” it occupied in order to prepare the expansions of the imminent Ibero-American Exposition of 1929.
An excuse that, seen over time, generated doubts; in the site that originally had to be freed, the Fountain of the Four Seasons (work of Manuel Delgado Brackembury) that we know today was placed in 1929.
It is known that its 81,297 kilos of iron were dismantled and sold for 45,738 pesetas of the time.
Today the historic Pasarela only lives on in old postcards and in the memory of what Seville was or could have been.