I was born in San Sebastian on the 28th of December, 1872. So I am not
only a Guipúzcoan but a native of San Sebastian. The former I regard as
an honour, but the latter means very little to me.
I should prefer to have been born in a mountain hamlet or in a small
coast town, rather than in a city of summer visitors and hotel keepers.
Garat, who was a most conventional person who lived in Bayonne, always
used to maintain that he came from Ustariz. I might say that I am from
Vera del Bidasoa, but I should not deceive myself.
There are several reasons why I dislike San Sebastian:
In the first place, the city is not beautiful, when it might well be so.
It is made up of straight streets which are all alike, together with two
or three monuments that are horrible. The general construction is
miserable and shoddy. Although excellent stone abounds in the
neighbourhood, no one has had the sense to erect anything either noble
or dignified. Cheap houses confront the eye on all sides, whether simple
or pretentious. Whenever the citizens of San Sebastian raise their
hands--and in this they are abetted by the _Madrileños_--they do
something ugly. They have defaced Monte Igueldo already, and now they
are defacing the Castillo. Tomorrow, they will manage somehow to spoil
the sea, the sky, and the air.
As for the spirit of the city, it is lamentable. There is no interest in
science, art, literature, history, politics, or anything else. All that
the inhabitants think about are the King, the Queen Regent, yachts, bull
fights, and the latest fashions in trousers.
San Sebastian is a conglomeration of parvenus and upstarts from
Pamplona, Saragossa, Valladolid, Chile and Chuquisaca, who are anxious
to show themselves off. Some do this by walking alongside of the King,
or by taking coffee with a famous bull-fighter, or by bowing to some
aristocrat. The young men of San Sebastian are among the most worthless
in Spain. I have always looked upon them as _infra_ human.
As for the ladies, many of them might be taken for princesses in summer,
but their winter tertulias are on a level with a porter's lodge where
they play _julepe_. It is a card game, but the word means dose, and
Madame Recamier would have fainted at the mention of it.
When I observe these parvenus' attempts to shine, I think to myself:
"The ostentation of the freshman year at college. How unfortunate that
some of us have moved on to the doctorate!"
No one reads in San Sebastian. They run over the society news, and then
drop the paper for fear their brains will begin to smoke.
This city, imagining itself to be so cultivated, although it really is a
new town, is under the domination of a few Jesuit fathers, who, like
most of the present days sons of Loyola, are coarse, heavy and wholly
lacking in real ability.
The Jesuit manages the women, which is not a very difficult thing to do,
as he holds the leading strings of the sexual life in his hands. In
addition he influences the men.
He assists the young who are of good social standing, who belong to
distinguished families, and brings about desirable matches. The poor can
do anything they like. They are at liberty to eat, to get drunk, to do
whatever they will except to read. These unhappy, timid, torpid clerks
and hangers-on imagine they are free men whenever they get drunk. They
do not see that they are like the Redskins, whom the Yankees poisoned
with alcohol so as to hold them in check.
I inspected a club installed in a house in the older part of the city
some years ago.
A sign on one door read "Library." When it was opened, I was shown,
laughing, a room filled with bottles.
"If a Jesuit could see this, he would be in ecstasy," I exclaimed. "Yes,
replacing books with wines and liquors! What a business for the sons of
Saint Ignatius!"
In spite of all its display, all its tinsel, all its Jesuitism, all its
bad taste, San Sebastian will become an important, dignified city within
a very few years. When that time comes, the author who has been born
there, will not prefer to hail from some hamlet buried in the mountains,
rather than from the capital of Guipúzcoa. But I myself prefer it. I
have no city, and I hold myself to be strictly extra-urban.