Part 1 (1/2)

Gatherings From Spain.

by Richard Ford.

PREFACE.

Many ladies, some of whom even contemplate a visit to Spain, having condescended to signify to the publisher their regrets, that the Handbook was printed in a form, which rendered its perusal irksome, and also to express a wish that the type had been larger, the Author, to whom this distinguished compliment was communicated, has hastened to submit to their indulgence a few extracts and selections, which may throw some light on the character of a country and people, always of the highest interest, and particularly so at this moment, when their independence is once more threatened by a crafty and aggressive neighbour.

In preparing these compilations for the press much new matter has been added, to supply the place of portions omitted; for, in order to lighten the narrative, the Author has removed much lumber of learning, and has not scrupled occasionally to throw Strabo, and even Saint Isidore himself, overboard. Progress is the order of the day in Spain, and its advance is the more rapid, as she was so much in arrear of other nations. Transition is the present condition of the country, where yesterday is effaced by to-morrow. There the relentless march of European intellect is crus.h.i.+ng many a native wild flower, which, having no value save colour and sweetness, must be rooted up before cotton-mills are constructed and bread stuffs subst.i.tuted; many a trait of nationality in manners and costume is already effaced; monks are gone, and mantillas are going, alas! going.

In the changes that have recently taken place, many descriptions of ways and things now presented to the public will soon become almost matters of history and antiquarian interest. The pa.s.sages here reprinted will be omitted in the forthcoming new edition of the Handbook, to which these pages may form a companion; but their chief object has been to offer a few hours' amus.e.m.e.nt, and may be of instruction, to those who remain at home; and should the humble attempt meet with the approbation of fair readers, the author will bear, with more than Spanish resignation, whatever animadversions bearded critics may be pleased to inflict on this or on the other side of the water.

CHAPTER I.

A general view of Spain--Isolation--King of the Spains--Castilian precedence--Localism--Want of Union--Admiration of Spain--M. Thiers in Spain.

[Sidenote: KING OF THE SPAINS.]

[Sidenote: LOCALISM OF SPANIARDS.]

The kingdom of Spain, which looks so compact on the map, is composed of many distinct provinces, each of which in earlier times formed a separate and independent kingdom; and although all are now united under one crown by marriage, inheritance, conquest, and other circ.u.mstances, the original distinctions, geographical as well as social, remain almost unaltered. The language, costume, habits, and local character of the natives, vary no less than the climate and productions of the soil. The chains of mountains which intersect the whole peninsula, and the deep rivers which separate portions of it, have, for many years, operated as so many walls and moats, by cutting off intercommunication, and by fostering that tendency to isolation which must exist in all hilly countries, where good roads and bridges do not abound. As similar circ.u.mstances led the people of ancient Greece to split into small princ.i.p.alities, tribes and clans, so in Spain, man, following the example of the nature by which he is surrounded, has little in common with the inhabitant of the adjoining district; and these differences are increased and perpetuated by the ancient jealousies and inveterate dislikes, which petty and contiguous states keep up with such tenacious memory. The general comprehensive term ”Spain,” which is convenient for geographers and politicians, is calculated to mislead the traveller, for it would be far from easy to predicate any single thing of Spain or Spaniards which will be equally applicable to all its heterogeneous component parts. The north-western provinces are more rainy than Devons.h.i.+re, while the centre plains are more calcined than those of the deserts of Arabia, and the littoral south or eastern coasts altogether Algerian. The rude agricultural Gallician, the industrious manufacturing artisan of Barcelona, the gay and voluptuous Andalucian, the sly vindictive Valencian, are as essentially different from each other as so many distinct characters at the same masquerade. It will therefore be more convenient to the traveller to take each province by itself and treat it in detail, keeping on the look-out for those peculiarities, those social and natural characteristics or idiosyncracies which particularly belong to each division, and distinguish it from its neighbours. The Spaniards who have written on their own geography and statistics, and who ought to be supposed to understand their own country and inst.i.tutions the best, have found it advisable to adopt this arrangement from feeling the utter impossibility of treating Spain (where union is not unity) as a whole. There is no king of _Spain_: among the infinity of kingdoms, the list of which swells out the royal style, that of ”Spain” is not found; he is King of the Spains, Rex Hispaniarum, _Rey de las Espanas_, not ”_Rey de Espana_.” Philip II., called by his countrymen _el prudente_, the prudent, wis.h.i.+ng to fuse down his heterogeneous subjects, was desirous after his conquest of Portugal, which consolidated his dominion, to call himself King of Spain, which he then really was; but this alteration of t.i.tle was beyond the power of even his despotism; such was the opposition of the kingdoms of Arragon and Navarre, which never gave up the hopes of shaking off the yoke of Castile, and recovering their former independence, while the empire provinces of New and Old Castile refused in anywise to compromise their claims of pre-eminence. They from early times, as now, took the lead in national nomenclature; hence ”_Castellano_,” Castilian, is synonymous with Spaniard, and particularly with the proud genuine older stock. ”_Castellano a las derechas_,” means a Spaniard to the backbone; ”_Hablar Castellano_,” to speak Castilian, is the correct expression for speaking the Spanish language. Spain again was long without the advantage of a fixed metropolis, like Rome, Paris, or London, which have been capitals from their foundation, and recognized and submitted to as such; here, the cities of Leon, Burgos, Toledo, Seville, Valladolid, and others, have each in their turns been the capitals of the kingdom.

This constant change and short-lived pre-eminence has weakened any prescriptive superiority of one city over another, and has been a cause of national weakness by raising up rivalries and disputes about precedence, which is one of the most fertile sources of dissension among a punctilious people. In fact the king was the state, and wherever he fixed his head-quarters was the court, _La Corte_, a word still synonymous with Madrid, which now claims to be the only residence of the Sovereign--the residenz, as Germans would say; otherwise, when compared with the cities above mentioned, it is a modern place; from not having a bishop or cathedral, of which latter some older cities possess two, it has not even the rank of a _ciudad_, or city, but is merely denominated _villa_, or town. In moments of national danger it exercises little influence over the Peninsula: at the same time, from being the seat of the court and government, and therefore the centre of patronage and fas.h.i.+on, it attracts from all parts those who wish to make their fortune; yet the capital has a hold on the ambition rather than on the affections of the nation at large. The inhabitants of the different provinces think, indeed, that Madrid is the greatest and richest court in the world, but their hearts are in their native localities. ”_Mi paisano_,” my fellow-countryman, or rather my fellow-county-man, fellow-paris.h.i.+oner, does not mean Spaniard, but Andalucian, Catalonian, as the case may be. When a Spaniard is asked, Where do you come from?

the reply is, ”_Soy hijo de Murcia--hijo de Granada_,” ”I am a son of Murcia--a son of Granada,” &c. This is strictly a.n.a.logous to the ”Children of Israel,” the ”Beni” of the Spanish Moors, and to this day the Arabs of Cairo call themselves _children_ of that town, ”_Ibn el Musr_,” &c.; and just as the Milesian Irishman is ”a _boy_ from Tipperary,” &c., and ready to fight with any one who is so also, against all who are not of that ilk; similar too is the clans.h.i.+p of the Highlander; indeed, everywhere, not perhaps to the same extent as in Spain, the being of the same province or town creates a powerful freemasonry; the parties cling together like old school-fellows. It is a _home_ and really binding feeling. To the spot of their birth all their recollections, comparisons, and eulogies are turned; nothing to them comes up to their particular province, that is, their real country. ”_La Patria_,” meaning Spain at large, is a subject of declamation, fine words, _palabras_--palaver, in which all, like Orientals, delight to indulge, and to which their grandiloquent idiom lends itself readily; but their patriotism is parochial, and self is the centre of Spanish gravity. Like the German, they may sing and spout about _Fatherland_: in both cases the theory is splendid, but in practice each Spaniard thinks his own province or town the best in the Peninsula, and himself the finest fellow in it. From the earliest period down to the present all observers have been struck with this _localism_ as a salient feature in the character of the Iberians, who never would amalgamate, never would, as Strabo said, put their s.h.i.+elds together--never would sacrifice their own local private interest for the general good; on the contrary, in the hour of need they had, as at present, a constant tendency to separate into distinct _juntas_, ”_collective_” a.s.semblies, each of which only thought of its own views, utterly indifferent to the injury thereby occasioned to what ought to have been the common cause of all. Common danger and interest scarcely can keep them together, the tendency of each being rather to repel than to attract the other: the common enemy once removed, they instantly fall to loggerheads among each other, especially if there be any spoil to be divided: scarcely ever, as in the East, can the energy of one individual bind the loose staves by the iron power of a master mind; remove the band, and the centrifugal members instantaneously disunite. Thus the virility and vitality of the n.o.ble people have been neutralised: they have, indeed, strong limbs and honest hearts; but, as in the Oriental parable, ”a head” is wanting to direct and govern: hence Spain is to-day, as it always has been, a bundle of small bodies tied together by a rope of sand, and, being without union, is also without strength, and has been beaten in detail. The much-used phrase _Espanolismo_ expresses rather a ”dislike of foreign dictation,”

and the ”self-estimation” of Spaniards, _Espanoles sobre todos_, than any real patriotic love of country, however highly they rate its excellences and superiority to every other one under heaven: this opinion is condensed in one of those pithy proverbs which, nowhere more than in Spain, are the exponents of popular sentiment: it runs thus,--”_Quien dice Espana, dice todo_,” which means, ”Whoever says Spain, says everything.” A foreigner may perhaps think this a trifle too comprehensive and exclusive; but he will do well to express no doubts on the subject, since he will only be set down by every native as either jealous, envious, or ignorant, and probably all three.

[Sidenote: DISUNION OF SPANIARDS.]

[Sidenote: ADMIRATION OF SPAIN.]

[Sidenote: M. THIERS IN SPAIN.]

To boast of Spain's strength, said the Duke of Wellington, is the national weakness. Every infinitesimal particle which const.i.tutes _nosotros_, or ourselves, as Spaniards term themselves, will talk of his country as if the armies were still led to victory by the mighty Charles V., or the councils managed by Philip II. instead of Louis-Philippe.

Fortunate, indeed, was it, according to a Castilian preacher, that the Pyrenees concealed Spain when the Wicked One tempted the Son of Man by an offer of all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them. This, indeed, was predicated in the mediaeval or dark ages, but few peninsular congregations, even in these enlightened times, would dispute the inference. It was but the other day that a foreigner was relating in a _tertulia_, or conversazione of Madrid, the well-known anecdote of Adam's revisit to the earth. The narrator explained how our first father on lighting in Italy was perplexed and taken aback; how, on crossing the Alps into Germany, he found nothing that he could understand--how matters got darker and stranger at Paris, until on his reaching England he was altogether lost, confounded, and abroad, being unable to make out any thing. Spain was his next point, where, to his infinite satisfaction, he found himself quite at home, so little had things changed since his absence, or indeed since the sun at its creation first shone over Toledo. The story concluded, a distinguished Spaniard, who was present, hurt perhaps at the somewhat protestant-dissenting tone of the speaker, gravely remarked, the rest of the party coinciding,--_Si, Senor, y tenia razon; la Espana es Paradiso_--”Adam, Sir, was right, for Spain is paradise;” and in many respects this worthy, zealous gentleman was not wrong, although it is affirmed by some of his countrymen that some portions of it are inhabited by persons not totally exempt from original sin; thus the Valencians will say of their ravis.h.i.+ng _huerta_, or garden, _Es un paradiso habitado por demonios_,--”It is an Eden peopled by subjects of his Satanic Majesty.” Again, according to the natives, Murcia, a land overflowing with milk and honey, where Flora and Pomona dispute the prize with Ceres and Bacchus, possesses a _cielo y suelo bueno, el entresuelo malo_, has ”a sky and soil that are good, while all between is indifferent;” which the _entresol_ occupant must settle to his liking.

Another little anecdote, like a straw thrown up in the air, will point out the direction in which the wind blows. Monsieur Thiers, the great historical romance writer, in his recent hand-gallop tour through the Peninsula, pa.s.sed a few days only at Madrid; his mind being, as logicians would say, of a _subjective_ rather than an _objective_ turn, that is, disposed rather to the consideration of the _ego_, and to things relating to self, than to those that do not, he scarcely looked more at any thing there, than he did during his similar run through London: ”Behold,” said the Spaniards, ”that little _gabacho_; he dares not remain, nor raise his eyes from the ground in this land, whose vast superiority wounds his personal and national vanity.” There is nothing new in this. The old Castilian has an older saying:--_Si Dios no fuese Dios, seria rey de las Espanas, y el de Francia su cocinero_--”If G.o.d were not G.o.d, he would make himself king of the Spains, with him of France for his cook.” Lope de Vega, without derogating one jot from these paradisiacal pretensions, used him of England better. His sonnet on the romantic trip to Madrid ran thus:--

”Carlos Stuardo soy, Que siendo amor mi guia, Al _cielo de Espana_ voy, Por ver mi estrella Maria.”

”I am Charles Stuart, who, with love for my guide, hasten to the heaven Spain to see my star Mary.” The Virgin, it must be remembered, after whom this infanta was named, is held by every Spaniard to be the brightest luminary, and the sole empress of heaven.

[Sidenote: GEOGRAPHY OF SPAIN.]

CHAPTER II.

The Geography of Spain--Zones--Mountains--The Pyrenees--The Gabacho, and French Politics.