Perhaps you do not know- ALL ABOUT SEVILLE- why one of the main avenues to enter the city of Seville is named after an american city, Kansas city, which is located in the North American state of Missouri. You may also wonder what is doing the statue of an Indian looking at the horizon in the vicinity of this avenue.
The links between the United States and Seville are diverse throughout history.
- C. Nichols visited Seville in the 1920s and wanted to build a Giralda in the Country Club Plaza shopping center in 1929 but ultimately the project was not carried out. In 1950 the shopping center was run by his son, Miller Nichols, who visited Seville during the April 1966 Fair. That year Seville, with Félix Moreno de la Cova being its mayor, and Kansas City, with Ilus W. Davis, they became sister cities. For this reason it was decided to change the name of the old avenue of San Pablo, by the current name of avenue Kansas City.
But Kansas and Seville would continue to maintain this good relationship, good contact and great mutual affection. It would be with the arrival of the Universal Exhibition of 1992 when a statue was commissioned for the United States Pavilion from the american sculptor Cyrus Edwin Dallin. This work would be baptized as “The Explorer”, an Indian on horse back who covers the sun with his hand and looking to the horizon. A work more than familiar to all sevillians since after the Expo it was donated by the americans to our city.
The equestrian statue of the Indian imitates the guide who accompanied Meriwether Lewis and William Clark when they crossed the American continent from one side to the other.
For those visiting Kansas City in Missouri, they will also find another sculpture of the Indian, “The Scout,” Installed in 1922 east of the Southwest Trafficway in Penn Valley Park, south of downtown Kansas City, dedicated as a permanent memorial to Native American tribes.
