NO8DO — Rebus, motto, history

15 May 2009

A rebus is a word puzzle that uses pictures to represent portions of words, based on their sounds. For example, "h" + [a picture of an arm] = "harm". I suppose that Egyptian hieroglyphs represent early predecessors of the rebus. In modern times, in the US, the rebus was made popular through the daytime television show "Concentration."

In Sevilla, within about a day of our arrival, we began noticing many examples of something that looked like "NO8DO" on signs and elsewhere scattered about the city. However, the "8" in the middle wasn't really a number; often it looked like the infinity sign "∞" rotated. Sometimes, it was more intricate.

Our curiosity piqued, we discovered from guide books and Wikipedia (where else!?) that this phrase is a type of rebus. The middle symbol represents a skein of yarn, which in Spanish is a "madeja." Reading the phrase, "no madeja do" sounds like "no me ha dejado," which means "it has not abandoned me." This is the motto of Sevilla.

I won't recount the whole legend here. The essence is that the city of Sevilla supported King Alfonso X against a potential usurper, his son Sancho IV. The support of the city for their king is embodied in the phrase "it has not abandoned me."

So far, so good. But what I found really interesting about this story is the time scales involved. Alfonso X ruled Spain in the 13th century, more than 700 years ago! So, here we have a city whose slogan commemorates an event that occurred centuries before Europeans discovered the Western Hemisphere! For a Californian, whose sense of the past is measured in decades or maybe a few centuries, this long and deep connection to history is just a bit stunning.



I haven't learned when this motto was adopted for the modern city. I went out today looking for old and new examples of its use.

The pictures illustrate some of what I found. The top and bottom show ornamentation on the "Sevilla Town Hall, a building whose construction was begun in 1527 and which was significantly expanded in the middle of the 19th century. The three small photos near the top show uses of the motto on a guard rail in a large park, on a city street map, and on a municipal service cover (a gas line?). The large picture in the center shows a lamp post near the cathedral. The same lamps line the lovely bridge crossing to Triana. At the base of these lamps is a date: 1832.

As for the small photos just above, the one at the left depicts some tiles on the wall surrounding the old tobacco factory building, which now houses the University of Sevilla. The photo at the right is from the wall of the Torre del Oro. It marks the level of flood waters from the Gualalquivir River from an 1876 flooding event. So, I guess we can conclude that even if the motto's rampant use is a relatively modern development, this rebus is deeply woven into the fabric of Sevilla.