Andalucía has long held a magnetic allure for artists, writers and dreamers. Its landscapes, wild sierras, whitewashed villages, sun-scorched plains, and Moorish palaces, have ignited the imaginations of generations. From the 18th to the 19th century in particular, a parade of foreign and Spanish creatives travelled to this region at the southern edge of Europe and found in its culture, history and light an, enduring source of inspiration.
This was not simply a question of aesthetics. Andalucía stirred something deeper. It was seen as a land outside time, where Christian, Jewish, and Muslim legacies overlapped and blurred; where flamenco echoed through the streets and shadows played across ancient walls. For the artists of the Enlightenment and Romantic eras, many of them disillusioned by industrialisation and urbanisation in northern Europe, Andalucía offered colour, mystery, and a deeper sense of life.
The Seeds of Romantic Fascination
Though the full Romantic movement would blossom in the 19th century, the 18th century laid the groundwork. Enlightenment scholars and early Grand Tourists began venturing into Spain, which at the time remained largely unfamiliar and exotic to most northern Europeans. Andalucía, in particular, was seen as the most "Oriental" corner of Spain and, by extension, Europe.
I vividly remember the owner of a hotel in Arcos de la Frontera exclaiming to me, perhaps 20 years ago, after a long discussion about how how many aspects of Andalucían life were still different to those of other European countries, “Allan, here we are in Africa! Europe starts at the border with Murcia!”
Travel writing began to flourish. One of the earliest influential accounts came from the Irishman Richard Twiss, whose 1775 travels across Spain took him through parts of Andalucía. Though his tone was often critical, he helped pave the way for later, more romantic portrayals.
Painters of the 18th century were also drawn to Andalucía’s architectural marvels: the Alhambra in Granada, the Mezquita in Córdoba, the Giralda in Seville. These weren’t just ruins of the past; they were living echoes of a multicultural legacy that challenged tidy Western narratives of progress and empire.
Andalucía and the Romantics
By the 19th century, Andalucía had become a favoured destination for writers and artists seeking the sublime. The Romantic movement, with its embrace of emotion, the exotic, and the untamed, found its ideal muse in the region.
Foreign Visitors
Among the most famous foreign writers to be captivated by Andalucía was Washington Irving, the American diplomat and author of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. In the 1820s, Irving travelled extensively through southern Spain and lived for a time in the Alhambra itself. His Tales of the Alhambra (1832) blended folklore, history, and imagination, cementing the palace’s place in the Romantic imagination. Irving’s poetic descriptions helped shape how generations of travellers would view Granada – not just as a destination, but as a dreamscape.
Another towering figure was the French writer Prosper Mérimée, author of Carmen. His 1845 novella, based on a tale heard during his Spanish travels, gave rise to Bizet’s opera and immortalised the image of the fiery Andalusian gypsy woman, Seville’s bullfighting world, and the raw passion of flamenco culture. While the portrayals were filtered through Romantic exoticism, they reflect how profoundly Andalucía captured foreign imaginations.
French painter Gustave Doré also visited Spain in the 1860s. His dramatic, moody engravings of Spanish life, from smugglers in the hills to flamenco dancers and village festivals, gave a visual form to the Romantic vision of Andalucía. The landscape, with its gorges, olive groves and crumbling fortresses, was rendered with an almost mythic intensity.
Spanish Masters
While foreigners brought global attention to Andalucía, Spanish artists from the region, or inspired by it, helped shape its internal cultural identity.
Francisco de Goya, though born in Aragón, travelled through Andalucía and was deeply affected by its people and customs. His early tapestry cartoons and later, darker paintings reflect a fascination with Spanish popular culture – bullfights, religious processions, and village life – much of it drawn from Andalusian traditions.
Later in the 19th century, painters like José Villegas Cordero, born in Seville, brought Andalusian scenes to life in vivid colour. His works often portrayed traditional festivals, processions, and daily life with a romantic eye but precise, academic technique. Likewise, Manuel García y Rodríguez, another native of Seville, painted atmospheric river scenes, gardens, and moments of quiet beauty drawn from the Andalusian landscape.
Meanwhile, the poet Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, born in Seville in 1836, captured the melancholy beauty of Andalucía in verse. His Rimas and Leyendas are steeped in the mysterious and the supernatural – themes born of Andalucía’s ghostly ruins and long shadows. His lyrical language gave voice to the yearning and nostalgia that defined the Romantic spirit.
Landscape and Culture
What was it about Andalucía that drew so many creative minds? In part, it was the sheer visual drama of the place. The contrast between jagged sierras and soft, rolling olive groves. The brilliant light that shifted through the day, casting sharp shadows and golden hues. The white villages clinging to mountainsides, and the silent, cavernous interiors of Moorish architecture.
But it wasn’t just landscape. It was Andalucía’s culture, its layered history, sensual music, and unhurried life rhythms. Flamenco, with its profound expression of joy and sorrow, spoke to something universal. The Semana Santa processions, with their haunting chants and incense, were unlike anything else in Europe, stunning visually but not a little frightening in their intensity.
To artists and writers fleeing the rationalism of the Enlightenment or the grime of the Industrial Revolution, Andalucía felt raw, immediate, and true. Here was a place where the past was palpably present, where people still danced, prayed, and suffered with intensity.
Legacy and Continuation
By the end of the 19th century, Andalucía had become firmly established in the cultural imagination as a symbol of both passion and poignancy. This legacy would carry on into the 20th century with figures like Federico García Lorca, whose dramatic works such as Bodas de Sangre and La Casa de Bernarda Alba have been performed in translation in many parts of the world, but the groundwork had been laid by the poets, painters, and dreamers of the 18th and 19th centuries.