I had to look the word up. It means snails, as in “We’ve got snails!” which is what the signs in tapas bar win­dows all over Seville were adver­tis­ing in late August. It was the snail sea­son, and the Sevil­lanos love eat­ing snails, and reserve their cus­tom for those estab­lish­ments which spe­cial­ize in the gar­den delights.

In the morn­ings, at the farm­ers mar­ket around the cor­ner from where I was stay­ing, there was a tubby lit­tle Span­ish woman who had a large tray sat up on a pair of saw horses. In it, she dis­played her only com­modi­ties: snails in two sizes, lit­tle and big. You had to be care­ful as you walked by her stand because a por­tion of her live­stock was always on the loose from their cor­ral, mak­ing their get­aways as fast as their stom­achs could carry them across the side­walk. I fre­quently went for break­fast at a small café next to the mer­cado and could sit at an out­side table sip­ping café con leche while being ser­e­naded by the sound of crunching.

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