an arid and treeless tract of country, glancing like jewels in a
sunburnt land. The pleasant and fertile strip of country, on the French
frontier is not properly Spanish, but Basque. On the other hand, nothing
could be more Spanish than the little quaint old town of Fuenterrabía.
The original name was Basque--Ondarrabia, “The two banks of sand.” The
Romans, hearing the name, but ignorant of its meaning and seeing,
moreover, the swift flow of the tide beneath the walls of the town,
called it Unda Rapida.[80] From the Latin Unda Rapida or Fons Rapidus
came the Spanish Fuenterrabía,[81] and the French in their turn,
connecting it with the Arabs, called it Fontarabie. The Basque name is,
however, still in use, and one of the streets of Irun where, as in many
other towns and villages, the street names are written up both in
Spanish and Basque, has the full-sounding name Ondarrabiko Karreka--the
street of Ondarrabia. If one may compare small things with great, the
cities of Northern Spain are like castles built by children in the sand,
and left high and dry by the receding tide. City after city stood walled
and bulwarked on the extreme fringe of the Christian territory, for a
time the court and capital of Spain, till a fresh conquest drove back
the Moors a lap further south. This in part accounts for the grim and
wonderful Spanish cities, with their magnificent buildings and
fortifications, that still exist, but exist with no longer the stir of a
great destiny within their walls, but merely as it were the mighty
shells of an extinct life. So Burgos, León, Toledo, were capital cities
for a space, thronged with the busy traffic of courtiers and warriors,
and Avila, the city of saints, has the great fortifications of a
frontier town. It is difficult to believe that Toledo has at all changed
since the Cid’s horse miraculously stayed before the burning light
hidden in the wall of one of its streets, and the water-carriers to-day
go leisurely down to the river, their donkeys’ panniers laden with
earthen jars, as when Cervantes wrote “La Ilustre Fregona.” And, indeed,
Spanish cities are little liable to change. The steep uneven ways of
Toledo and Salamanca and Segovia scorn modern traffic. The passing of a
carriage is possible in the main streets, but is a rare event that
rattles and reverberates along the walls. More suitable are the stately
processions, their banners showing brightly against the brown-yellow
buildings. Segovia has been called the queen of Castilian cities, as
Toledo is the king. And Segovia must ever remain mediæval, a city of a
hundred levels, sinking by terraces of half-ruinous walls, tufted with
grass and flowers, from the Cathedral down to the foot of its mighty
Roman aqueduct. A Latin author three hundred years ago wrote that “in
Segovia nemo otiosus, nemo mendicus”--there were no beggars at Segovia.
It would be unsafe to assert this of any Spanish town to-day. Spain is
no country of “neat cities and populous towns full of most industrious
artificers.” Such towns--Barcelona,[82] Bilbao--there are, but mostly
the cities are, in the words of Burton, “cities decayed,” which contain
many “Spanish loiterers,” though they are not “base and poor towns,” nor
are the people “squalid, ugly, uncivil.” The southern cities show a
softer influence. The surrounding country is less abrupt and harsh, and
the stern features of the north are forgotten. Cadiz lies out into the
sea, a Spanish Venice, cut in straight white streets, like the slices of
an iced cake. Seville is wonderful at all times, a _maravilla_ to
foreigners and Spaniards. The Spanish novelist Palacio Valdés, in “La
Hermana San Sulpicio,” has described it during nights of midsummer, when
to go through the city was to visit the interior of the houses, for from
the _patios_, where the families were assembled, great rays of light
shot through the iron screen-doors into the dark and stifled streets,
and guitar and song broke the stillness: “Seville at such an hour had a
magical look, a charm that disturbed the mind.” But of all the cities of
the south Granada has a peculiar fascination. This is largely due to its
many contrasts. It is a city of orange groves and fountains, yet it
lies over two thousand feet above sea-level, and is a summer rather than
a winter city; the fiercest heat is relieved by cool air from the
eternal snows of the Sierra Nevada, and the gardens of the Alhambra and
the Generalife, with their myrtles, cypresses and cedars, give a
delicious shade. In winter icy cold strikes through the marble halls of
the Alhambra; yet it is never more beautiful than seen in February from
San Cristobal, or from the cactus-covered hill beneath San Miguel, or
from where the Darro flows rapidly far below. For it rises above the
slender branches of elms and poplars, grey and in parts purple from
their swelling buds--the red and yellow-brown towers, the crumbling
walls of red earth and brick and large smooth rounded stones of white,
or black, or red, the trailing ivy, the open white-pillared galleries. A
few almond-trees are in flower, and above to the left stand the long
lines of cypresses of the grey-white Generalife, where flower celandines
and daffodils. Many of these Spanish cities are visited chiefly for
their great ancient buildings and Cathedrals; yet the most part of them
deserve a more patient study for their own sake, for their memories of
old, and for the life of their narrow winding streets. The Spanish
writer _Azorín_ (Martínez Ruiz), in a book of few pages,[83] conveys
some wonderfully clear-cut impressions of Spain. He turns with
preference to details of the centuries of Spain’s greatness, when
Murcia, Valencia, and Seville were famous for their silks, Talavera for
its earthenware, Toledo for its swords, when the gloves of Ocaña or the
spurs of Ajofrín were unrivalled; or to the survival of old Spain in a
picture, or a building, or a city. Thus he loves to wander through León
with its spirit of ancient Spain and its classical street-names--here a
cobbled grass-grown _plaza_ with pale acacias and ancient walls, the
slow flight of doves and the wind rustling torn pieces of paper; there a
quiet convent _patio_ with bays and rigid cypresses. For him the narrow
streets of Córdoba have a deeper charm than those of any other Spanish
city. He wanders through the labyrinth of intricate winding ways, with
glimpses of small pillared _patios_ of flowers and fountains, and finds
everywhere silence and a deep serene melancholy, restfulness, oblivion,
and a harmony of soft shades, nowhere the light-hearted frivolity
conventionally attributed to Andalucía. _Azorín’s_ originality consists
in forcing a few apparently insignificant details to yield the whole
spirit of a city, a country, a people. If he mentions the Mosque of
Córdoba, it is but to note the beggars taking the sun in the _Patio de
los Naranjos_, the sparrows twittering in the orange-trees, the sound of
pitchers filling at the fountain. He gives us poignant descriptions of
dead provincial cities and ruined ancestral houses. The decadence of
Spain brought flourishing cities to low estate: Spain’s revival menaces
them with a fresh ruin. Old narrow passages and intricate courts and
sculptured houses make place for the introduction of tramways and broad
asphalt streets. The old Santander described by Pereda survives only in
his books, the old parts of Barcelona and Valencia are fast
disappearing, and happy is the city such as Toledo whose position on
abrupt rocks with no level spaces seems to promise an eternity of
mediævalism and individuality.
VII
IN OLD CASTILLE
It is with astonishment and a kind of fear that the traveller passes
through the high-lying plains of Old Castille, journeying swiftly from
city to city, to
“Old towns whose history lies hid
In monkish chronicle or rhyme,
Burgos, the birthplace of the Cid,
Zamora and Valladolid....”
for in these intervening tracts, sun-parched and windswept, it seems
scarcely possible that men should live. The villages are closely huddled
together, little compact masses of low, unwhitewashed houses, without a
tree or garden, so colourless, and clinging to the soil as sometimes to
pass unnoticed. Rivers flow between low, bare banks without bush or
tree, like streaks of mother-of-pearl inlaid in earthenware. And there
are wide tracts of land without a house or boundary, a continuous
desolation with no signs of life, except here and there a flock of sheep
or herd of goats, or a line of peasants returning at sunset from their
work. Surely life here can have but few attractions; there can be no
joy of the soil, little temptation for Berceo’s “_mal labrador_” of the
thirteenth century, who “loved the earth more than he loved the
Creator,” and “would alter landmarks to enlarge his estate”--_cambiaba
los mojones por ganar eredat_. Yet the slower trains are invaded by a
merry throng of pleasant, courteous, good-looking peasants, oval-faced,
with splendid teeth and eyelashes, who speed the journey with gay
conversation and shrill singing, and pass constantly from one carriage
to another to greet friends or to avoid the officials who inquire
awkwardly after tickets. They have plenty of life and cheerfulness, and
it is with renewed wonder that one looks at the dead, crumbling villages
where they live, and remembers the piercing force of the Castilian sun
in summer and the icy, penetrating winter winds. All day they must work
without the shelter of a single hedge or tree in the searching wind[84]
that sifts the soil, or under a sun that parches and shrivels it into
dust. But a nearer acquaintance reveals a certain charm[85] about these
villages of hard, clear names: Campillo, Cantalapedra, Pedroso,
Madrigal--a charm of clean-swept spaces, and clear, luminous air and
silent intensity; and the country ceases to be uniformly colourless.
Here a woman in a dress of light-blue linen, with long flowing
headkerchief of white, passes on a donkey through fields of golden ripe
corn; there, from narrow windows in a street of yellow-brown houses,
hang bright patches of geraniums and carnations in flower. And the
doorways of square or round or pointed arches give entrance to cool,
silent courts. _Azorín_ has described the old Castilian hidalgo, who
has never left his ancestral house, with its large rooms, many of them
unfurnished, and old portraits consigned to an attic and covered with
the dust of centuries: “His lands have disappeared, his furniture has
disappeared; he does nothing; he has a sad intensity of expression,” and
when further misfortune befalls him he says, “There is no help for
it--_qué le vamos á hacer_!” Everywhere is decay, and the trace of
vanished splendour. So these old ruined hidalgos live out their grey,
monotonous lives in some ancient town or village of Castille, amid the
immense plains with “distances of radiant sky and faint blue lines of
mountains.” The blue smoke rises from scented fires of rosemary, and, as
the bells ring to Matins, the doves swerve and circle, the grey doves
sweep slowly across the sky perpetually blue. And night and day the
doors of the houses are kept continually closed, with a deserted air
beneath the broad coats-of-arms carved in stone. _Azorín_ describes
minutely a Castilian town, standing among cornfields and olives--one of
those towns that the foreigner rarely has the courage to visit. Its
streets are narrow and tortuous. It contains three ancient inns, four
churches, three hermitages, two convents. It has no industries save a
few ruined cloth manufactures, and only the usurer flourishes. It
contains fourteen students (who have not taken their degree), four
doctors, twelve lawyers (only six of whom earn a living, and this by
slandering one another, and from time to time bringing a blackmail suit
against some poor-spirited inhabitant). There is a Guild of the Christ
of the Dying, and when a member dies a messenger goes through the
streets ringing a bell and crying: “At such an hour the funeral of Don
Fulano.” The summers are fiery, the winters are long and cruel. No
visits are paid; doors and windows remain closed; few persons go through
the streets, but in the _plazas_, on clear days of winter, dense groups
of men may be seen taking the sun, wrapped in their brown plaids and
_capas_. Nothing happens; the deep silence is broken by the clang of a
forge-hammer or by the crowing of a cock. In time of Carnival a few
“masks” pass, dressed up with mats and carrying old brooms. The
labourers are poverty-stricken, and meat is the luxury of a few “rich”
inhabitants. _Azorín_ notes the Castilian’s “fundamental energy,
aloofness, indifference, and lofty disdain, with sudden inspirations of
heroism”; and we may count it no small heroism to live on, proudly
uncomplaining, in surroundings so harsh and discomfortable.
VIII
THE DESERT AND THE SOWN
The French soldiers, looking at the trifling Manzanares and its mighty
bridges, may have exclaimed, “So even the Spanish rivers ran away.” But
those who, at sight of tiny threads of water in immense river-beds, are
inclined to ask, with Don Pedro in _Much Ado about Nothing_, “What need
the bridge much broader than the flood?” find their answer after a few
days of heavy rain. Marks six feet and more high on houses many hundreds
of yards from the banks of the Ebro record the rising of the waters.
Thus, in many districts, crops which have survived the summer drought
are swept away by the autumn deluge, and those who have cried for rain
are mocked with ruin when the waters “prevail exceedingly upon the
earth.” Spain’s agriculture perishes for lack of water, yet water
abounds, whether subterranean, as in parts of Castille, or in the
copious snows of the high-lying regions, where the snow is sometimes
preserved in snow-pits, _pozos de nieve_, or in these periodical
floods; and it would seem that the philologist had Spain in his mind
who connected the Basque adjective _idorra_, meaning “dry,” with ὓδωρ,
the Greek for water. To utilize, extend, and regulate the water
supply is a problem of vital importance to Spain--a problem which has
long occupied the thoughts of Spanish statesmen. Alfonso the Learned, in
his “Crónica General,” says, “This Spain, then, of which we speak is as
the paradise of God.... For the most part, it is watered with streams
and fountains, and wells are never lacking in all places that have need
of them;” but Strabo, more impartial, had remarked of Spain that, “For
the most part, it yields but a poor sustenance. For large districts are
composed of mountains and woodland and plains, with thin and, moreover,
not uniformly well-watered soil--οὐδἐ ταὐτην ὁμαλῶς εὔυδρον.” And
since Strabo’s time many have been the alterations for the worse.
Turdetania, for instance, the country between Seville and Huelva, is no
longer marvellously prosperous--θαυμα-στῶς εὐτυχεῖ; in fact
South Estremadura, of old one of Rome’s granaries, is now one of the
most desolate regions in Spain. But the worst decay is that of the
forests. The woods have fallen and fallen, and still the axe rings
avidly in those woods that remain. The very words for a wood, _bosque_
or _selva_, have become rare and poetical. Thus the soil is further
parched and impoverished, while towns and villages stand unsheltered
from wind and sun. The Escorial, which grew up among woods, may now be
seen from afar in its almost sinister magnificence across grey hills
and plains without a tree; and Madrid, though a tree figures prominently
in the city arms, looks out upon plains from which all traces of former
oak and chestnut forests have long since vanished. The absence of trees
in Spain increases both the dryness and the floods, and afforestation is
therefore quite as important as irrigation. The canalization of rivers
may diminish the floods, but while there is no soil on the
hill-sides--or soil so light that it is swept away by heavy
rainfalls--the rain must continue to be a blessing strangely disguised.
It is calculated that in six or eight years the trees would knit the
soil together, and give it sufficient staying power to resist and absorb
the rains, though, of course, there would as yet be no actual profit of
timber. Outlay of toil and money for so distant a remuneration is not
congenial to the Spanish temperament. The great land-owners do nothing.
The State spends a few thousand pesetas every year; but at the present
rate afforestation will need hundreds of years, bearing a resemblance to
that long-desired map of Spain, which is to be issued in some eleven
hundred sections, and of which from two to three sections appear
annually.[86] The advantages of irrigation have been amply proved in
Spain, justifying the juxtaposition of water and gold in Pindar’s ode;
but only about a fiftieth of Spain’s total area--and especially the
plain of Granada and the strip of coast of Málaga and Valencia--can at
present show the immense productiveness due to irrigation, combined with
the swift-maturing sun of Spain. There are, of course, immense
difficulties, and not the least are the ignorance and the poverty of the
peasants. Water added to a poor soil will be of little value if the
peasants are not taught artificial means of enriching the soil, and
modern methods of cultivating it. The extreme poverty of the peasants
would, however, prevent them at present from employing any but the
simplest methods; in many districts they mortgage their land in order to
be able to sow their crops, and Spanish farmers are often in the hands
of the usurers. The usurer has been their only resource in moments of
distress, and finally they are driven to emigrate, leaving their land to
the usurer. A narrow strip of fertile land along the rivers stands out
in contrast to the desolate country beyond. Thus the Ebro flows through
Aragon, among woods of silver birch and poplars, and plantations of
olives and vines and maize; but on either side appears the barren
country of perfectly bare reddish or brown hills of crumbling earth,
like great sand-dunes, without a plant, curiously folded and scored by
rushing water, with intricate, abrupt hollows and catacombs. The
villages are the colour of the soil, and at no great distance are
scarcely distinguishable from a bare hill-side. Or desert plains are
thinly covered with grey thyme, and in the more fertile parts produce
dwarfed vines and corn, so that in autumn one looks across immense,
undivided plains of stubble and yellowing vineyards to the distant
horizon of dim blue hills. The cruel winds[87] of Spain blow straight
from the iced mountain ridges, unstemmed by any barrier of woods. The
first snows fall early round Avila and on the uplands, but in the towns
snow at Christmas is rare. The foreigner sometimes has a capricious wish
to see these wide, tawny plains covered with snow--_après la plaine
blanche une autre plaine blanche_, like the Queen Romayquia, wife of
Abenabet, Moorish King of Seville, who could find no solace in her
longing for the sight of snow. The King ordered almond-trees to be
planted all about the city of Córdoba, that in early spring at least, if
not at Christmas, the Queen might beguile her fancy with the snow-white
almond blossoms.[88] But even in Andalucía, towards the end of December,
one may see several comparatively low mountain ranges thickly coated
with snow. Stores of firing are then brought down to the villages from
the treeless hills. Further north the vines have been pruned, and the
vine-twigs brought in for burning; but here the vines have not yet lost
their leaves, and the firing consists of thyme and whin and rosemary,
mint and lavender and other scented hill-plants. Troops of donkeys
arrive at sunset, with immense, sweet-smelling loads, that entirely hide
the red or purple tassels and fringes of their harness. The oranges now
gleam in myriads along the eastern coast; sometimes the icy winds from
inland freeze them, and fires of smouldering straw are burnt round and
in the orange groves, after the wind has ceased, that a dense smoke may
hang about the trees and warm them. Weeks before Christmas the
_turroneros_ from Jijona, noticeable for their small peaked hats of
black velvet, appear in nearly every city and town of Spain. In porches
or in large bare shops they set out their layers of white wooden boxes,
and samples of the _turrón_, or almond-paste, which is an essential part
of Spanish Christmas fare. For the time, Jijona, the grey town in the
hills, is deserted, though but a few weeks ago every house was a busy
scene of _turrón_ making, and nailing thin white planks into boxes. The
snow will soon lie deep on the Carrasqueta hill-range above the town.
The almond-trees, whose pink flowers in February form a solitary belt of
colour between Jijona and the rocky mountains, are now as bare and grey
as the surrounding country. Some of the inhabitants have gone to the
warmer south, taking the _diligencia_ to Alicante; others have scaled
the steep, winding road past the Barranco de la Batalla, where once the
Cid wrought havoc of the Moors, and now herds of goats feed apparently
on nothing, and have taken train at Alcoy for the cold, high-lying
cities of the north. But not in the northern uplands only are Spanish
winters cruel; the _dehesas_ of Andalucía are equally unprotected, the
silent, icy winds blow subtle and fierce and penetrating over the
undulating hill country round Córdoba, and one may see shepherd boys,
closely muffled in their plaids, standing frozen and motionless, the
sheep pressing around them and against one another for shelter.
IX
THE COAST OF CATALONIA IN AUTUMN
A first view of Catalonia from the sea shows at any rate the stones from
which, according to the proverb, the Catalans make bread. For great
spines of rust-coloured rock, covered here and there by pines of a crude
green, run to the sea and break off in abrupt cliffs. In the valleys of
these ridges towns and villages skirt the shore, Rosas, Palamos, San
Feliú de Guixols with its cork industry, and lace-making Arenys de Mar.
Towards Barcelona both soil and villages become greyer, but Barcelona
itself has colour in plenty. The Spanish and foreign ships in the
harbour, the palm-trees near the quay, above them the tall white and
yellow houses with shutters of green and brown, and above these again a
view of the great Cathedral--all this, bounded by the purple mountains,
makes the sight of Barcelona from the sea very picturesque and
attractive.
The coast to the south of Barcelona is very fertile. There are hedges of
reeds twenty feet high, of cactus and of aloe, aloes of that exquisite
blue-green which is so often the colour of the Mediterranean in
September. Through yellowing orchards of magnificent peaches, of figs
and apples in great abundance, come glimpses of the intense leaden-blue
hill-ranges to the west. The grapes have already for the most part been
gathered for wine, but there are still many vines that, earlier in the
year, are cut back to the ground, and have the look of blighted
potato-plants, and that now, grown to the size of currant-bushes and
unstaked, are laden with large yellow grapes. Occasionally, too, one
sees tall date-palms and orange-trees.
After Casteldefels the hills are covered with pines, and the nights,
which are warm but have heavy dew, bring out their scent so strongly
that it is at times almost oppressive. The nights are silent but for the
continual chirping of crickets and the sound of the unquiet sea. The
stars are strangely bright, Sirius burns large and intense, and Orion
nightly stalks the sky in all his glory till the sun catches him in
mid-heaven. The sea is alive with phosphorus, and far out are seen the
lights of fishing-boats, while on land the glow-worms are almost as many
as the stars. The orange and purple sunrises and sunsets of pink and
amethyst are very lovely, and the sails of the fishing-boats continue
white, and the sea retains its blue for some time after the light of the
after-glow is gone. A little further south the cliffs are covered with
dwarf palms, rosemary in flower, and other shrubs. The road here is
good, but one meets no pedestrians, for a path along the railway is the
accepted thoroughfare between village and village in spite of the
notices that forbid its use. The men for the most part wear a black
peaked cap, a long blouse, and trousers of brown or blue. The sash is
nearly always black and is worn wide, the sandals have a tip and heel
covering only, with fastenings of leather or black cloth from the tip.
The women wear handkerchiefs that entirely cover the head. The
predominant colours are blue and black. A kilomètre or more before
wine-making Sitges the road is bounded by rough terraces of stone with
vines and dark green carob-trees. A succession of terraces on the one
side runs far up the hills, and on the other the rude-walled vineyards
stretch to the edge of the sea. Sitges, a village of less than four
thousand inhabitants, is prettily placed, its octagonal-towered church
rising from a rock in the sea. A few kilomètres further Villanueva y
Geltrú is but a fairly large and rather ordinary provincial town, though
it has its picturesque corners, with its houses washed in various shades
of blue, pink, green, or yellow, and views of vineyard country appearing
at the end of many of its long, straight streets. After Villanueva the
hills recede further inland, and there is a little more flat country,
but it is occupied largely by great marshes, loud with the croaking of
frogs.