The soundtrack of Seville, Spain from a First Year GO student
Ayla Boose is a content writer for KCPR. She spent the Spring of 2025 in Seville, Spain through the First Year GO program at Cal Poly. The opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of Mustang Media Group.
It was a random Tuesday. It was 100 degrees outside, even though it was 5 a.m., and I had just come back from a club with my friends in Seville, Spain.
My feet ached from a full day of walking: Walking to class, back home, to the bars and back home again. After a month of being abroad, it was starting to feel like my own familiar neighborhood.
I knew each building I would pass on my walk from the apartments. I knew which ones indicated I was near Jester Café. I knew which intersection lights gave ample time to cross the street, even if there was a neon red hand blinking at the end of the crosswalk. I knew which fruit stands had the best mangos and I knew which grocery store had the green grapes that I liked the best. I knew how long it took on the bus to get to the climbing gym and I knew how much a Spanish tortilla at Salt and Sugar Café would be if I stopped by before class.
The hole that was left by my friends back in San Luis Obispo and my bed back home ached a little more tonight. I opened my laptop to play some music to fill the desolate single apartment that became my abode.
I attempted to decorate it with the handful of mementos I could fit in my suit case, including my film camera, a gingham scarf and a collage my roommate made for me. It wasn’t perfect but it would do.
I don’t remember how I found the song “In Spite of Me” by Morphine, but now when I hear the sparkling strings that embellish the intro, I’m transported back to my walks through Parque Maria Luisa.
The breeze that was merciless, contrasting the heat that radiated off the asphalt of the bustling streets. I think of the times I spent laying on benches and on the hot cobblestone perimeter of the river near Torre Del Oro. The song feels like a deep sigh, cleansing but solemn.
A lot of the specific songs that I grew akin to while in Seville were found through a gravitation towards dreamy guitars laced with lyrics speaking to feelings of change.
In a lot of ways, abroad was nothing that I expected it to be. It felt like a disappearing act. Poof, I was gone. No more San Luis Obispo, no more dorms, no more Vista Grande runs. My experience was me running away to a different country, hoping to escape the hustle and bustle of college life. Hoping to escape myself, and of all the things I was uncertain of. It was a sobering experience. A comedown.
One of the reasons I love music so much is because even though I’m a writer and a journalism major, I can’t always put exactly what I’m thinking into words. When you find a song that is able to encapsulate a feeling, emotion or thought perfectly, to the best guitar riff you’ve ever heard– it’s a different type of satisfaction. That’s what I found in “Coming Down” by the Dum Dum Girls.
It wasn’t necessarily the lyrics that pulled me in at first, but the dreamy blurred lull of reverberating silky guitar strings and rhythmic drums. It’s a predictable melody, but it serves as the heartbeat of the song.
I considered the song a ballad to my realization that just because I left so much stress behind, didn’t make it simple. Sitting on a bus heading to Lisbon, Portugal on April 13, listening to this song, it felt like I was surrendering to the idea that maybe uprooting everything I knew wouldn’t fix what I thought needed fixing.
Before I had gone abroad myself, I had always heard how being abroad was so life-changing. It’s a cliche but it’s true. What you don’t find out till you get there, is exactly how. The music I listened to molded so much of that conclusion for me.
Being a freshman, going abroad wasn’t scary for me. When I told people I was going to be living in Spain my spring quarter, a lot of people looked at me like I was crazy.
What felt crazy to me was staying.
I got so caught up in the idea that I had to take a lot of classes while also being in school clubs, doing some sort of creative project, succeeding in said classes, being the best at X, Y and Z.
What I didn’t realize is that the line between experiencing new things and drowning in an all-too-busy schedule was almost nonexistent for me. I was stretched thinner and I was more delicate than a piece of antique lace– handle it wrong and it would rip.
Spain changed everything. I had the time and energy to rest for the first time in six months. I had time to appreciate where I was, who I was with, the experiences I had. I was able to actually sit with all the thoughts I hadn’t given the light of day during my first two quarters in college.
One of my favorite activities became people-watching. Of course.
Everywhere I went: On the bus, in the park, sitting at a café, or in the center of the city after getting ice cream. After my phone got stolen at a club a month into the quarter, the rest of my walks around Seville were to the soundtrack of the music that played from my iPad, which was safely hidden in my suede brown handbag adorned with lace and ribbon I had collected from Nice, France, Seville and back home in San Diego.
The cathedral in the city center was a prime spot for quality observation. It was a mix of those visiting Seville for the first time and those whose daily routine was simply entangled with the city.
My favorite part about walking to my psychology class was making sure I passed La Giralda, often arriving a bit early with my friends to just sit and take in the massive intricate cathedral. With spires and pointed edges carved to perfection scaling the entirety of each outer wall, the perfect combination of different elements coming together to create one image.
I was listening to music constantly. “10 Mile Stereo” by Beach House was the song that played as we talked about anything and everything. This song in my head plays out like a movie.
The beginning is simple, with a singular drum beat and fingerpicked guitar riff. As the song wanes, more and more elements and characters come into play. Synths, an evolving drumline, and the exposition of a singing choir of glistening sound. The climax of the song is an ethereal sonic breakthrough reminiscent of Slowdive or LSD and the Search For God. It envelops the rest of the melody without muting it. It saturates every other sound that exists next to it and opens up like a budding flower.
A lot of this trip was lived in my head during the in-between periods of my routine,like my walks through the park on the way to class. I left two hours early so I could spend one of them laying in the grass to read Just Kids by Patti Smith. Aside from the music, this book came to be my bible and one of the best I’ve ever read.
After reading a couple chapters, I closed my eyes, put my earbuds in and melted into the quiet moment. I scrolled through my Spotify and clicked on The Breeders. I clicked on an album with a weird, paper mache figure on the cover. The background was black with a few lone lines that looked like tv static.
As the song began I was surprised that I was listening to something by The Breeders. The melody was slow, muted, stripped down. It sounded like Kim Deal was recording the song from inside a cardboard box. What struck me even more were the lyrics. It reminded me of something Jim Morrison wrote, reading like a poem.
“I am the autumn in the scarlet
I am the makeup on your eyes
I land to sail
Island sail.”
Its melody followed me through every moment alone. On walks to the grocery store, on every plane ride. If asked what song I would associate most with my time in Seville, I would say it was “Off You” by The Breeders.
It was a week before we were going to leave. I finally decided to go to The Alcazar, because I knew I would’ve been eternally mad at myself if I came to Seville and didn’t see it.
The Alcazar is one of the many renowned castles in Seville, the architecture dating back to the Moorish rule of the city. Rooms completely covered in tiles, hand-painted with intricate designs, a maze of gardens and flowers, fountains, dramatic renaissance paintings and palm trees swaying softly in the wind.
As I walked around, The Raveonettes’ “Recharge and Revolt” played through my wired headphones. The jangly guitar weaved throughout the song is one that gets stuck in your head, and it got stuck in mine.
With an optimistic synth uncovering itself within the first 30 seconds, this song marked the end of the roller coaster that was my experience abroad. It felt like the bittersweet memories I was leaving behind and the excitement of going back home where everything was sickly familiar.
On one of our last nights in Seville, my friends and I made our final trip to the skate park that was near our apartment. I always brought my speaker. That night I made sure to queue “Selfless” by The Strokes.
Carving around the now familiar green concrete bowl, littered with graffiti, I had never felt so carefree. At that moment my only worry was playing with my friends and what I was going to eat for dinner. Half the time my dinner ended up being the pavement, with a side of sprained wrists.
Music is like that one perfume you always wore, or how the sun shines through the windows at 5 p.m. on a Sunday. It always brings you back to a specific feeling, no matter where you are. That’s what I can say about these songs. Now they have their specific places in the tapestry of my memories, my collage of experiences from Spain. I will never associate them with anything else, and for that I’m glad.
Sometimes music serves as a better reminder of a memory. More than a picture, or a souvenir. Music is timeless.
