After that trip, Seville seemed miraculous. I checked in at my hotel shortly before midnight, walked down the boulevard Reyes Catolicos, past open restaurants and bars, turned on a side street and spotted a small neighborhood tapas bar called La Azotea, clearly a place that tourists don’t find by chance. I took up a stool at the bar, ordered a glass of dry red, and asked for whatever the kitchen wanted to make me. I looked around the room, an everyday tapas bar on Zaragoza Street with a blackboard listing wines and patrons laughing and sharing plates. Shortly a small bowl was placed in front of me. A delicate piece of delicious grilled or sautéed cod rested on a bed of mashed or puréed potato-like vegetable. The wine was excellent. When I finished, I asked to meet the owner-chef but didn’t have the presence of mind to ask for the recipe. I wrote down the name of the place and paid my bill: eight euros ($9.50).

Instantly, from the first hour, Seville for me was all like that, a feast of the senses, the simplicity of daily life. Walking one morning in the Parque de Maria Luisa, I thought of my mother, who loved it, who had its name. Another day, I found the romantic Art Deco bar in the opulent Alfonso XIII hotel, and chatted with new acquaintances while sipping a perfect Negroni.

Spain has been a haven for writers and dreamers and wanderers, expats from colder lands. Unlike Mexico, where expatriate Americans tend to concentrate in San Miguel Allende, Mexico City and the Riviera Maya, Americans in Spain are scattered through the peninsula. Sarah Gemba, a Bostonian who fell in love with a Spaniard, moved to Seville years ago and started a travel agency. A fellow New Englander, Lauren Aloise, transplanted herself to Madrid and established food tours. My mother had wanted to move to Madrid and lived with that dream for years but never managed to do it. As a child, I didn’t understand her passion for Spain, why she felt so at home there. But now I know.

That came to me again while seated at the outdoor restaurant Mariatrifulca, off the Triana Bridge over the Guadalquivir River in Seville. I noticed a face at a nearby table. It was the image of my grandmother, my mother’s mother, her aquiline nose, large deep-set dark eyes, thin lips, high cheekbones, dark hair pulled back in a bun. It was startling, but over the days I spent in Seville, I picked out other familiar faces, and I wondered if way back we had been related.

One evening after dinner at Duo Tapas, an outdoor spot on a busy plaza, a couple of acquaintances and I walked leisurely around the Barrio Santa Cruz, the gem of Seville’s intricate casco antiguo, a nest of elegant two-story homes of pale colors and decorative grillwork butting cobblestone streets. It was near midnight, not late by Spanish standards. Strollers lolled under the soft lights of street lamps, bars spilled over with patrons. Minutes later we were climbing the three flights of stairs to the rooftop bar of the EME hotel. It was packed. Taped music blared from speakers. I found myself bouncing to an old hit whose name escaped me. More friends of friends joined in. There were drinks, introductions, stories.

Beams of pinkish light bathed the majestic 16th century Catedral de Santa Maria de la Sede, the world’s largest Gothic church, built on the site of the 12th-century Almohad mosque with its minaret, La Giralda, towering beside it, symbol of the interlocked cultures of Spain. I couldn’t take my eyes off the great Catedral and La Giralda, images I had carried in my mind much of my life.

Days later I was on the fast train to Madrid, and as we rolled past olive groves and barren hills, the land getting dryer, the hills more stark, the landscape harder, I was thinking about the whitewashed towns of Andalusia. For a long time I had wanted to live in a place where the sun was broiling and the sea came limpid and soft to the shore. I wanted that blanched earth, those bleached buildings, and the geraniums blooming crimson in the sun.