The Great Plague of Seville

[Carmen Denali]

The year was 1650, the plague had been raging for three years and would continue for another two, as I walked through the streets of Seville the smell of death hung heavily in the air though this is nothing compared with the stench of decay and rotting bodies. "Stupid, stupid humans", snarled Cortez, how could they be so ignorant and stupid, secretly I smiled, not for the death or suffering that was going around me, for that my heart ached, no I smiled because because of his suffering, so many have died and so many more are infected which ultimately means our food source has declined to desperate level.

He is not the only one suffering, we all are but I do not care, if I could but close my eyes and end this maddness that is my life I would welcome it. The humans do not even notice or realise the others that disappear the poor souls that we lay claim to. The women and children have been the greates casualties of this plague along with the elderly of course, for me the worst is the children, there is no longer laughter in the streets or neighbouring houses everything has gone quiet, the morgues long since filled, the bodies of the dead are piled high in disused buildings waiting to be burned. Schools that once were full of happy beautiful children lie empty their students dead or dying. To see their little hands and feet visible under sheets or even just under other bodies leaves me in a pain I cannot describe.

For me though when the thirst become too much great my only victims are the men that remind me of Cortez or the one who robbed me of my dear madre, I'm sure this did not go unnoticed but honestly I couldn't care less of what he thought, our hunting parties remained small and our family survived but this plague would go down in history as, "The Great Plague of Seville", the greatest of the 17th centuary.

It is believed to have been brought to Spain by ship from Algeria, it was spread north by coastal shipping devestating towns and their hinterlands along the medditeranean coast as far north as Barcelona. No town or city lost as many souls as Seville did, primarily due to quarrantine measures being ignored and unenforced, so from a population of around 600,000 its is believed we lost 150,000. Seville would never recover from such a devestating loss. We would go on to survive another plague twenty five years later but nothing was as devestating as that one. To this day it haunts me still.