The Big Smoke

If you like smoking cigarettes, go to Spain. Let the Germans and the Yanks ruin everywhere else in Europe with their politically-correct flared-nostril syndrome, in Spain the hotel receptionist lights a cigarette before relieving you of your passport. Bizet wrote an opera based on Spain's tobacco trade — did you know that? Not many people know that.

Carmen was set in the Tobacco Factory in Seville. It is still there. It looks like a palace, was meant to look like a palace and is now a faculty of law. It was built in homage to the central part played by the tobacco industry in Spanish commerce.

The entrance portal features the carved head of the American Indian who introduced the new arrivals to the delights of the scented weed. He is a big, noble, contented looking fellow, complete with feathered head-dress and pipe sticking out of his mouth. All around him are stone galleons, sails unfurled, running home before the wind, bringing home the precious booty.

Once through the great wooden doors, a series of marble halls lead into enchanted courtyards where fountains used to play while the women took a break from making tobacco fortunes for the boss-class. So precious was the weed that the women were strip-searched before they went home after a long day's work. Carmen was one of them.

The tobacco industry later spread to the satanic mills of Belfast and Dublin, with which there is no comparison. Suffice to say the boss-class here had even less respect for the workers, which explains, perhaps, the absence of an Irish version of tobacco-dance. Try humming "Woodbine" instead of "Toreador" and you get the picture.

Hum "Toreador" and you begin to grasp the esteem in which tobacco is held in Spain, particularly in Seville. As you approach the former factory and light up in anticipation, the thrill goes all the way from head to heels. It's as good as that first cigarette ever was in rainy downtown Ireland. In fact, better, for passing Spaniards murmur "olé", recognising a kindred spirit. All you need's a bull charging down the road and you're away in a hack.

The bull-ring is just across the river, anyway, as it was in Carmen's time. Old photographs show the toreadors marching out of their hotels in full regalia, cigarettes dangling gloriously from their fingers. One guy is shown with a cigarette between his lips as he is carried, wounded, from the arena.

Most carriages on trains are for cigarette smokers, which is why you need to book early. Losers are compensated with cushioned seats and generous ashtrays in the corridor between compartments. Attendants pushing trolleys sell cigarettes by the carton and they are cheaper, by the way, than duty-free.

Most art galleries allow smoking in the corridors which are furnished with lounge seats for your further delectation. This is extremely civilised since trailing round galleries can take hours and a person needs to take a breather. In the hairdressing salon it seemed positively churlish to refuse the ashtray proffered while one's hair was being washed, albeit it was difficult to smoke while one's head was bent backwards over the basin.

By the time you get into a cathedral it seems strange to see signs forbidding tobacco but that's alright — smoking is allowed if you make the effort to climb all the way up to the belfry. Have you ever sung Carmen from the top of the cathedral in Seville? While smoking? It's really quite difficult. Not impossible, but difficult, given the climb. Even the gargoyles are coughing.

Spain has to be the last place in Europe where a haughty gentleman pauses to light the signora's cigarette before sweeping her into the restaurant. Certainly it's the only place where the motorcyclist paused to light a cigarette before revving up and relieving my companion of her shoulder-bag. The police were sympathetic. "Your tobacco was in the handbag?" There are ashtrays on every desk in the station.