A 'babble of tongues': Seville's famous cigarette girls

Many visitors coming to Seville for the first time tend to focus on its most famous landmarks, such as Plaza de España, the cathedral and La Giralda or the Alcázar fortress. However, few people - unless they are particularly interested in Mérimée’s Carmen - spend much time admiring the old tobacco factory on Calle San Fernando.

Today, the building, a remarkable example of 18th-century industrial architecture, houses part of Seville University, but it continues to attract a steady flow of tourists wanting a picture of the workplace of Seville’s famous cigarette girls.

At the time of its construction, the 18th-century tobacco factory was the second largest building in Spain, after El Escorial, the royal residence in Madrid. The factory was built just outside the city walls on an old Roman burial site close to the Puerta de Jerez, an area that Richard Ford described as the ‘dunghill of the city’. Construction began in 1728 and took 30 years to complete, and it remains one of the largest and most architecturally distinguished industrial buildings ever built in Spain.

However, the infamous cigarette girls were yet to be invented, because, at that time, the factory was worked by around one thousand men, while 200 donkeys would have powered the mills used to turn the tobacco into snuff.

Seville was the only manufacturer of snuff in Spain, although the popularity of the cigar saw part of the factory adapted for the production of cigars.

While the production of cigars in other countries was considered ‘women’s work’, the workforce in Seville consisted only of men. By the turn of the 19^th century, the quality of the cigars had deteriorated and the factory faced frequent problems with the workforce due to wage demands and working conditions. It was forced to close in 1811 due to the arrival of invading French troops, and when it reopened two years later, it was with an all-female workforce. With the exception of a period between 1816 and around 1840, when the work force was mixed, the factory employed only women.

At the peak of production during the middle of the 19^th century, around 6,000 women would have been employed to hand-roll the cigars at the factory, but the introduction of mechanisation saw the workforce reduced to around 2,000 by the beginning of the 20^th century.

Robert Dundas Murray, who visited Seville towards the middle of the 19^th century, remarked that the exterior of the building had the air and proportions of a palace. He also noted that it was surrounded by a ‘dry ditch’, which would ‘stand a short siege’.

Murray also commented on the ‘beauty and docility of the mules’, which, he claimed, began their task on the ringing of a bell, and not with the use of a whip.

However, this ‘scene of silence’ was in contrast to the area where the ‘babble of tongues’ of the cigarette girls ‘stunned the ear’. These women, he asserted, had no restraint in their conversational powers. ‘So many feminine voices in shrill exercise produced an effect that left anything but an agreeable impression,’ he noted.

He was quick to point out, however, that the hands of these women worked just as energetically as their tongues. The workers rolled approximately 200 cigars a day according to Murray, although he was ‘particularly struck by the pale and cadaverous of every countenance.’

Excerpt from the book - Seville: a legacy of enchantment.

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