The decline of the port of Seville

Seville’s harbor decline is the gradual disappearance of a once-busy river port and the maritime world that had defined the waterfront. As Macarena recalls its former traffic beside the dark, nearly empty quays, that history becomes inseparable from Carlota’s memory of Captain Xaloc: the ships vanish, the port dwindles, and finally Carlota herself disappears from the window where she had waited for twelve years.

The Former Port

Macarena describes the old port as a major center of trade with the Americas. Steamships and sailing vessels once docked there before traveling downriver to Sanlúcar and Cádiz and crossing the Atlantic. Her account restores detail to a waterfront that Quart and Macarena now encounter as a different place: brigantines, schooners, and small boats once filled both banks, while fishing boats and white-canopied craft brought cigar-factory workers from Triana. Port sheds, cranes, and warehouses completed the working landscape.

The remembered harbor is also set against the modern city. From the quay, Macarena looks toward the Arenal promenade, the dome of the Maestranza theater, modern buildings that interrupt the view of the distant Giralda, and the hidden Santa Cruz district. The contrast makes the decline more than a loss of vessels: the old port’s structures and rhythms have receded from the visible city, surviving principally through memory and historical images.

A Landscape in Carlota’s Story

Macarena says that the former harbor looked like a forest of masts and sails. It was this landscape that Carlota saw from the tower of the dovecote. The image joins the port’s public history to the private scene of Carlota looking out toward the river, giving the vanished ships a place in the family’s story of her and Captain Xaloc.

Carlota never learned what had happened in the Battle of Santiago. She continued to wait at the window for twelve years, watching the Guadalquivir as the schooners stopped coming and going. The decline unfolds gradually in Macarena’s telling: first the vessels disappear from the river, then, one day, Carlota disappears from the window. By then, Carlota and Captain Xaloc had become legendary figures, and songs had been made about them.

What Remains

Carlota was buried in the crypt of the church where she would have married Xaloc. At the direction of Macarena’s grandfather Pedro, who became head of the family after Carlota’s father died, the twenty pearls were set as tears on the Virgin’s image. The pearls thus became a memorial to Carlota and to the man who might have been her brother-in-law.

Macarena identifies the church as what remains of the two figures, alongside Carlota’s memories, letters, and other traces, including the postcard Quart has found. The port’s decline gives this preservation a wider frame: both the harbor’s former life and Carlota’s lost future survive not as present realities but as fragments—a remembered view, a legend, songs, letters, and pearls. Through Macarena’s account, the changing waterfront becomes a measure of what the city and her family have lost.