The Dark Side of Spain's Fiesta

As Barcelona stages an Olympics and Seville a world's fair, Spain celebrates its comeback. But domestic discontent casts a pall on the party.

The trip from the new Spain to the old is but a five-minute stroll across a gleaming white bridge that spans the Guadalquivir River in Seville. On one / side, near the monastery where Christopher Columbus was once buried, rise the extravagant pavilions of the Universal Exposition. There, 250 fountains gurgle, 325,000 newly planted trees and shrubs shade the weary, and 96 restaurants replenish the hungry. But once over the bridge, sidewalks crumble and the highway dead-ends in a stinking garbage dump known as El Vacie. Within earshot of Expo 92's loudspeakers, 500 Sevillians elbow one another for their daily water...

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