The saying goes that “from necessity becomes virtue”, but when instead of necessity we talk about addiction, virtue becomes a sharp, awake and fruitful wit. Something such that this could have happened to the Sevillians of the 16th century who had taken to smoking tobacco but did not have the money to pay for that vaporous vice imported from the other side of the Atlantic.
To continue taking a few puffs without spending some maravedíes that they did not have, the beggars of the Seville metropolis used their imagination and came up with one of the simplest and at the same time popular ideas that have come out of the inventive homeland: cigarettes.
Inventions ‘made in Spain’. When taking stock of the inventions contributed to humanity from Spain, the list usually includes classics such as the mop, the disposable syringe, the cable car, the table football, the digital calculator or the Chupa Chups, among a wide and varied list of creations not free of controversy. The tobacco cigarette also often sneaks in among them.
Specifying its origins is not as simple as doing it with Juan de la Cierva’s autogyro, Manuel Jalón’s mocho with mango or Eric Bernat’s famous lollipops; But it is usually stated that the genesis of the small paper cylinders full of stings was created in Seville in the 16th century.
In the absence of maravedíes… Good is ingenuity. The Sevillian beggars who at that time had taken to smoking but had no money for vices must have thought something like this. There is a very popular story that claims that it was they who in the 16th century created the famous cigarettes as a way to satisfy the monkey without more investment than a few sheets of rice paper and hours of searching with the back bent through the streets and inns. of the city.
His strategy was very simple. They were dedicated to collecting cigarette butts and the remains of the tobacco that was unloaded at the port and then crushing it and rolling it between sheets of rice paper until it formed small compact cylinders. They weren’t exactly cigars, but at least they could be smoked and they calmed the anxiety.
Between history and legends. Not much more information is preserved about the Sevillian origin of the cigarette and there are those who consider it a legend, those who believe that history Twitter.com/Pentrarto/status/605158828292886528″>is later to the 16th century and who directly maintains that if what we are talking about is cigarettes as we know them today, manufactured and with paper, it is not possible to go back further than the 19th century; But the history of Seville has gained strength over time and today can be found cited in newspapers, foreign websites and lists of the most popular Spanish inventions. Also in the stories of free tours who are dedicated to talking about Seville’s tobacco past.
The tobacco footprint. Whether the story of the beggars is more or less precise, what is undeniable is that tobacco has left a deep mark on the city. The old Seville Tobacco Factory has stood there since the 18th century, which operated as the first tobacco factory in Europe and now houses the headquarters of the university. The manufacturing of American plants also represented an important economic engine for the city for generations and encouraged the famous figure of the Sevillian cigarette makers who would be responsible for immortalizing Gonzalo Bilbao, Jean Laurent and especially the composer Georges Bizet in his opera ‘Carmen’. .
Tobacco became a royal monopoly already in the 16th century and very soon its import from American lands began to be monitored for production in Seville. In 2003 Santiago de Luxán and Óscar Bergasa published an extensive study in Vegeta in which they explain that the first records of a stable tobacco trade through the Casa de Contratación of Seville can be traced back to the end of the 16th century and by the beginning of the 17th century its flow was already intense enough for duties to be imposed in 1611. of entry to the tobaccos arrived from the Indies.
A custom not always unpunished. The national history of tobacco is in any case extensive, it goes far beyond Seville and is full of episodes that would not be out of place in an adventure novel, such as that of Rodrigo de Jerez, a man from Huelva who is often noted as one of the first tobacco smokers in Europe… but the first. The man sailed aboard the caravel Santa María during the famous 1492 expedition led by Christopher Columbus and, already in the New World, he became fascinated by the habit of the locals of putting herbs and a burning brand to their lips “to take their incense.”
He was so fascinated that Rodrigo adopted the custom and brought it with him to Spain to the scandal of his neighbors, who suddenly found him exhaling smoke through his nose and mouth as if he were a demon from hell. The Inquisition did not like that one bit, which, it is said, sentenced him to years in prison.
From “beggar smoke” to a sophisticated habit. Whether the Sevillians of the 16th century or later centuries took more or less part in the origin of the cigarette, what is certainly clear is that those elongated cylinders full of tobacco bites ended up triumphing in a big way, inside and outside of Spain. The baptized by some as “beggar’s smoke” gained popularity in the Old Continent and over time benefited from the impulse of the Industrial Revolution and the social changes that, already in the 20th century, popularized its consumption among women.
modernity. It is known that by 1825 cigarettes were already packaged and marketed and just a few years later, in 1833, manufactured packs could be found for sale. The great boost to its industry came before the end of that same century thanks to a machine designed by James Bonsack, a device designed to roll cigarettes and which was capable of preparing the same number of units in one day as dozens of employees. His promises soon attracted the interest of tobacco producer James Duke, alias “Buck”, who knew how to take advantage of them.
The rest, until reaching filtered cigarettes—also with a Spanish seal—and the even more modern electronic cigarettes, is a story for another article.
Image | Wikipedia and Pawel Czerwinski (Unsplash)
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*An earlier version of this article was published in December 2023
