ETHNOLOGY, LANGUAGE, AND POPULATION.
On the first glance at a map of Spain and Portugal we are apt to think
that few countries could have so well-defined a frontier as that formed
by the Pyrenees, the Mediterranean, and the Atlantic. In so compact a
country, and one so distinct and so shut off from the rest of Europe, we
should expect to find a more unmixed and a more homogeneous population
than in any of those states whose frontiers are more open and
conventional. But such is very far from being the case. Even at the
present time the Pyrenees are no boundary throughout their whole course,
either as to race or language. The Basque overlaps them at one end, and
the Provencal at the other. Moreover, they have been a political
boundary throughout their whole length only since the middle of the
seventeenth century. Navarre was united to the Spanish crown in 1515,
and Rousillon to France only in 1659. Ecclesiastically, both the
dioceses of Bayonne and of Narbonne advanced far into Spain. So far
from the population of Spain being unmixed and pure, the contrary is far
nearer the truth. As Senor Tubino has well observed, from its position
at the south-western angle of Europe, and the most westerly of
Mediterranean lands, beyond which lay only the impassable ocean, it must
early have become a very eddy of nations, where all the tribes and races
who have successively held command of the Mediterranean must necessarily
have halted, over which and in which all invaders who have crossed the
Pyrenees from Northern Europe, or have passed the Straits of Gibraltar
from Africa, must have surged in almost ceaseless conflict. To think of
Spain as ever having been at any given time occupied solely by any
single race or people is to lose the clue to her whole history. Of this
not only the social and political condition of the country, but the
toponymy and nomenclature of her map afford decisive proof.
We first hear of Spain in history about the sixth century before Christ,
as then inhabited by the "Iberi" and "Kelt-Iberi," with here and there
colonies of more unmingled Kelts. It is more than probable that both of
these races succeeded anterior ones, the existence of which we trace
only through the remains of praehistoric archaeology, in the flint, stone,
and bronze instruments, similar to those found elsewhere in Europe;
these were also probably followed by races whose remains we find in the
sculptors of the so-called "Toros" (bulls) of Guisando, and in the
builders of the Megalithic monuments, the dolmens, menhirs, and circles
which are found from Algeria to the Orkneys. For all purposes of history
we must take the "Iberi" and the "Kelts," with their mixed tribes, as
our starting-point. These we find scattered in much confusion throughout
the Peninsula. Either the tribes were constantly shifting their ground,
owing to petty wars and tribal dissensions or to unknown economic
conditions, or the successive Greek and Latin writers from whom we get
our information have not themselves been clear as to the distinction of
these races. Speaking loosely, we may say that the more purely Keltic
tribes held their ground in the north-west and west, in Galicia and
Portugal, with a few scattered colonies further south. Andalusia, parts
of the centre, the north and north-east were inhabited by the "Iberi;"
while the Kelt-Iberian tribes lay chiefly in the centre and on the
eastward slope. Both of these great races have left clear traces on the
maps of ancient Spain. There can be no reasonable doubt that the
"Illiberris" which we find in classical maps is a transcription of the
Basque "Iriberri," which we still find in the French Basque country and
in Navarre, meaning "New-Town," or more exactly, "Town-new;" that when
the Romans called a town which they built in Galicia "Iria-Flavia," in
honour of their then empress, they really used the Basque word "Iri," a
town or city, just as the colonists of the United States and Canada used
the French "ville" or English "town," and named a new city Louisville,
Charleston, Georgetown, in the North American colonies. So, too, any one
who compares the name "Pena," given to mountains and mountain-chains on
the map of Spain, together with the river names, "Tamaris," "Deva," and
the town and district of "Britonia" or "Britannia" in the north-west,
can hardly doubt that these names were given by the same Keltic race who
have left us so many "Pens" and "Bens" in Northern Britain, who gave the
names "Tamar" and "Dee" to Devonshire and Cheshire streams, and called
our own island Britannia, and themselves Britons. Which of these races
is the older? the Iberi, i.e. Basque, or the Keltic? How can we decide
this? Language is a deceitful tool as regards race. A people may utterly
forget their original language, and adopt that of their conquerors or of
some superior race with whom they have come in contact. Of this we have
not only numerous examples in the past, as in the Latin and romance
tongues superseding many a more ancient idiom, but we can see the same
change actually going on in our colonies and dependencies in our own
day. Still there is a certain rough chronology in language. A
monosyllabic language we may presume, in default of evidence to the
contrary, to have preceded one whose characteristic is agglutination;
and again, a language which agglutinates or incorporates its members is
presumably prior to an inflexional or analytic one. Now the Basque, the
modern form of some one of those tongues which the Greeks and Romans
called Iberian, belongs to the second of these classes, and the Keltic
to the third. Another mode of investigating the antiquity of a language
is to study the original names of the most necessary objects of daily
life, and see if they can reveal to us anything about the state of
civilization of those who used them before the language took a literary
shape or any books were written in it. A language in which we find all
the words expressing articles of greater civilization to be borrowed
from other tongues we may presumably deem older than the languages from
which it has borrowed them. Now in the Basque, Escuara, the undoubtedly
native words for cutting instruments seem all to have their root from
words signifying stone, or rock, and all such words which imply the use
of metal seem to be borrowed. The language as it were represents the
"stone" age, before the use of metals was known. It is also singularly
poor in collective and general terms; thus, while many of the names for
separate kinds of trees are native, the most common collective term
_arbola_, "the tree," is clearly borrowed from the Latin. Although the
arguments from anthropology, the form of the skull, &c., as compared
with other races, are of still more dubious value than those derived
from language, yet they all tend to the same conclusion. We may then
hold from these convergent lines of reasoning, at least as a provisional
hypothesis, that the Iberian or Basque race is older in Spain than the
Keltic, and consequently that in the representatives of the former we
have the remains of the oldest historical people of which we have any
record in the country.
We said above that, from its geographical position, the Peninsula would
necessarily be the final-halting-place in ancient times of all the
masters of the Mediterranean as they pushed westward. There we should
find their farthest outposts. Thus in Spain we have, at first dimly
seen, successive colonies of Egyptians, Phoenicians, and Greeks. There
it was that Carthaginians and Romans met to dispute the supremacy of the
Mediterranean and of the civilized world. When, after a long occupation,
during which it Latinized Spain more completely than any other country
except Italy, the Roman Empire fell, successive waves of barbarian
destroyers swept across the land, Sueves, Alans, Vandals, Visigoths, in
wild confusion and internecine strife, wrecked the civilization which
they could neither appreciate nor understand. The last of these races,
the Visigoths, who ruled the longest, strove hard to found an empire
from 450 to 710, but without success. The real power which held society
together then, and which wrought what little order and law still
existed, was the Church, and not the State. The Councils of the Church
were the true legislative assemblies, and the real representatives of
the people in those times. Yet, with all the power of the Church to
uphold it, the Visigothic Empire remained so weak that it fell at the
first shock of the Mohammedan Arabs. The Moors or Arabs landed in Spain
in the year 711. In ten years they had conquered all of the Peninsula
that they cared to hold; in eleven years more, 732, they had been
defeated at Poictiers by Charles Martel, and had withdrawn for ever from
France, except from the district of Narbonne. This rich province they
held for many years, and it would seem to them to be more than an
equivalent for the bare and humid mountains of Galicia and the Asturias,
or the higher Pyrenees, which alone in the Peninsula were exempt from
their sway. The Arabs and the Moors of Barbary are the last great race
that has occupied Spain. Jews and a few Gipsies are the only peoples
that have entered since. A few remnants of Berber tribes, isolated from
their countrymen by the rapid advance of the Christian army in the tenth
and eleventh centuries, like the Maragatos of Astorga, have remained in
North-Western Spain, and doubtful remains of other peoples are found
here and there, but none of these are in sufficient numbers to influence
the nation as a whole. No country was more completely Romanized than
Spain. In fact, after the Augustan age we might almost say that the best
Latin writers were Spaniards born; Seneca, Quintilian, Lucian, and
Martial were all natives of Spain. Hosius, the champion of Latin
Christianity in the early part of the fourth century, was a Spaniard.
The names of many of the towns are still Roman. Yet the Arabs have left
almost a deeper mark upon the toponymy of the country. Look at the map
of Spain, and we see, even up to the Pyrenees, how many Arabic names
there are, especially of rivers and mountains, upon the map of Spain.
Only in Galicia and the Asturias the Keltic and the Latin, in the Basque
Provinces the Basque, and in Catalonia the Romance names have held their
own. In all the rest the Roman names would have probably died away, but
that the language of the Church was Latin, and preserved the Roman names
of cities, monasteries, and shrines. Down even to the twelfth century it
might seem doubtful which language would prevail, so many Arabs wrote in
Spanish, and Spaniards in Arabic, or wrote Spanish in Arabic characters.
The struggle was decided by the sword; the expulsion of the Arabs was
also the expulsion of their tongue. Yet the Arabs have left far more
traces on Spanish than Spanish has done on Arabic. The Spanish Jews,
however, had forgotten their Semitic tongue, and to this day the sacred
language of the Jews of the Balkan Peninsula, and of many of the Syrian
Jews, even of those at Jerusalem, is not Hebrew but Spanish; their
liturgical works are written in that tongue, and they use it always in
the synagogue.
In spite, however, of all this mixture of races and of languages, Spain
and the Spanish language has perhaps fewer dialects than any other
European speech. From the Central Pyrenees to the Straits of Gibraltar
only one dialect is used, the Spanish or Castilian, the purest and
noblest of those which sprang from the decaying Latin. At the inner
angle of the Bay of Biscay Basque is still spoken by a population of
about 400,000 souls. The Galician dialect is far more closely allied to
the Portuguese than to the Spanish, and should be considered as
belonging to the former tongue. Between Galicia and the Basque Provinces
are the many Patois, or Bables, of Asturia, which alone of the Romance
tongues in the Peninsula have kept the three distinct genders, the
masculine, feminine, and neuter terminations of the Latin adjective. The
speech of Leon, too, may be classed as a separate dialect. In Catalonia,
Valencia, and the Balearic Isles a Provencal or Romance dialect is
spoken, the _Lemosin_ as it was called in mediaeval times, and which
stretched from the Loire to the frontiers of Murcia, and from the
western coast of the Bay of Biscay, with few interruptions, almost to
the Black Sea. In the thirteenth century the Catalan dialect more
resembled that of the Gascon Bearnais, or the Western Languedocian, than
of the neighbouring Provence, but centuries of intercourse have since
modified it, and the three dialects of Catalonia, Valencia, and the
Balearic Isles must now be classed as a Provencal speech.
The tongues of all these successive occupiers of the soil have doubtless
left traces in the noble Spanish language, but in very unequal
proportions. A very few words belong to the old Iberian speech, but it
is to that, perhaps, that Spanish owes the purity and the paucity of its
vowel sounds, as from the Arabic it has gained the gutturals which have
prevented its sinking to the effeminate softness of the Italian, and it
still preserves the lofty sonority of the Latin. Some few of the
elements of its vocabulary may be traced to the Keltic, less to the
Teutonic languages. From Arabic it has taken more, and those words of
more important character. But the bulk of the language still remains
Latin. It is essentially one of the Romance dialects which sprang from
the "lingua rustica," the country speech of the decaying Roman Empire.
It has been calculated that six-tenths of its words are Latin, a tenth
Gothic or Teutonic, one-tenth liturgical and Greek, one-tenth American
or modern borrowings, and one-tenth Arabic. But as to this last, we must
not forget that the different parts of the vocabulary of a language have
a very different value. Some could be well dispensed with, some are of
first necessity. There are words which we only see in print, and seldom
or never hear spoken; there are words which belong only to science or to
pedantry; but there are others which are in daily and hourly use, and
whose employment is many times more frequent than the whole number of
words in all the rest of the language put together. It is thus that the
contribution of Arabic to Spanish vocabulary is of far more importance
than is apparent by its numerical proportion; many of the most common
terms, especially of those used in the south of Spain, are of Arabic
origin.
Thus has been formed the noble Spanish tongue, the richest and most
dignified of all that have sprung from the decay of Latin. Marvellously
adapted to oratory and to verse, most incisive and mordant in the
tongues of the lowest class, stately and sonorous almost to a fault, it
is yet unequalled in grace and tenderness in the old romances and in the
mouths of women and of children. Italian is its only rival. While
reading its stately sentences, and marking the majestic rhythm of Scio's
grand translation of the Bible and of its other religious literature, we
can well understand why Spain's greatest emperor, the lord of many lands
and of many tongues, spoke Spanish only to his God. It is rare to find a
foreigner who has mastered Spanish, who does not ever afterwards delight
in its use above all other tongues except his own.
The population of Spain, according to the census of 1877, is 16,625,000,
including the Balearic and Canary Islands, and the North African
possessions. The number of inhabitants in Spain has fluctuated much at
different periods, according as war, emigration, or bad government have
affected the condition of the people. In the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries the population, according to the only estimates procurable,
was about 9,000,000; in 1621, at the close of Philip III.'s reign, it
had sunk to 6,000,000, the lowest point on record; it gradually rose
from 7,500,000 at the end of the seventeenth century to 10,500,000 at
the close of the eighteenth. The wars of Napoleon then lowered it by
500,000, but in 1821 it had recovered, and reached 11,600,000. A more
rapid increase then took place till 1832, when the population numbered
14,600,000. The Carlist and civil wars which marked the beginning of the
reign of Isabella II. reduced it by more than 2,000,000, if the returns
are exact. In 1837 and in 1846 it stood at 12,200,000. In 1857 at
15,500,000, whence it mounted rapidly to 16,800,000 in 1870, a total
which the late Carlist war and that in Cuba has reduced by some 200,000;
and at the last census, 1877, as said above, the returns were
16,625,000.
The number of inhabitants to the square mile is 90, just half that of
France, about a third that of Great Britain, and a fifth that of
Belgium. This comparative scarcity is easily accounted for when we
consider that nearly one-half (46 per cent.) of the territory still
remains uncultivated; and although a considerable portion of this
consists of mountain or of naturally sterile soil, a still larger
portion of it is susceptible of some kind of cultivation, and even the
portion under cultivation would under good husbandry, support a much
larger population than it actually does.
More than two-thirds (66.75 per cent.) of the whole working population
of Spain are engaged in agriculture, and the total produce, including
cereals and cattle of all kinds, wine and fruits, cork, woods, esparto
grass, &c., after supplying the demand for home consumption, leaves a
surplus of agricultural produce for exportation of the value of
14,000,000_l_. sterling. Those engaged in manufacturing industry and in
commerce are reckoned at 10-1/2 per cent, of the working population; but
in Spain, as elsewhere, the relative numbers are slowly changing,
following the conditions of modern European life; a greater
proportionate number are annually withdrawn from agriculture, and are
being added to the population of the great towns, and to the
manufacturing industries. Thus, until the last census the highest
population of Spain per square kilometre was to be found, not in the
manufacturing provinces of Barcelona and Valencia, nor in the great
mining provinces, but in the fishing and agricultural province of
Pontevedra, in Galicia. In 1870 Pontevedra numbered 107, Barcelona 98
inhabitants to the square kilometre. In 1877 it is Barcelona that
numbers 108, and Pontevedra 100 only. Next after these provinces come
the two Basque ones of Guipuzcoa 88, and Biscay 87. The one almost
wholly agricultural, the other mining and agricultural. The nearest
after them is the province of Madrid, with only 77 per square kilometre,
and Corunna and Alicante with 75. These figures will, we think,
sufficiently indicate the character of Spanish industry.
The chief centres of manufacturing industry are Catalonia and Valencia,
in which provinces nearly all the textile goods of Spain are produced.
The chief mining districts are those round Carthagena in Alicante,
Linares in Jaen, the Rio Tinto in Huelva, Somorrostro in Biscay, and of
quicksilver at Almaden in the province of Ciudad Rodrigo; but valuable
mines, as detailed in a former chapter, are found in many other
provinces of Spain. In fact, there is scarcely one without a mine of
more or less importance.
Those engaged in professions of all kinds--lawyers, doctors, artists,
journalists--are only about 10-1/2 per cent. of the whole working
population. The clergy, who once numbered, it is said, one-third of the
whole population, have greatly diminished during the present century,
and are still gradually declining. Including religious orders of all
kinds, inquisitors, and the secular clergy, they still numbered, at the
close of the last century, nearly 250,000, out of a population of
10,500,000. In 1826 they had sunk to about 60,000, in 1858 to 44,000, in
1862 to 40,000, and their present numbers are probably about 35,000.
Immense changes have taken place in recent times, and more particularly
in the present century, with regard to the distribution of land in
Spain. The large amount of property held by the Crown, the religious
orders, the clergy, and various municipal bodies, and the restrictions
imposed by the laws of the Mesta on the enclosure of land, rendered the
number of private proprietors formerly very few. Even in 1800 their
number was only 273,760. In 1764 it was estimated that the clergy
possessed one-sixth of the real property, and one-third of the movable
property of all Spain, and the property of the Church paid scarcely any
taxes, or none at all. From the beginning of the sixteenth century
protests were continually being made against abuses of Church property,
but only towards the end of the eighteenth century were measures of
reform seriously undertaken. Little, however, was really effected till
the Cortes of Cadiz in 1812-13, when the feudal dues on land, of
whatever nature, regal, ecclesiastical, or seignorial, were abolished.
The religious orders were also suppressed. In 1820 a law was passed
forbidding the Church to acquire any more real property. Tithes, of
which the clergy possessed 60 per cent, and the laity 40, were
diminished by half in 1821, and wholly suppressed in 1837. In 1836 the
possessions of the clergy were declared to be national property, and the
sale of them was begun. This, with various interruptions, according as a
liberal or reactionary Government has been in power, has been continued
to the present time. The Crown and municipal property had been sold at
an earlier period, from 1813 to 1855. The Mesta was totally abolished in
1837 as to its privileged rights on property, and in 1851 became merely
an agricultural association for the improvement of the breed of cattle.
The serfs in Galicia were declared to have become proprietors of their
land by prescription in 1763.
The result of these successive measures, and of these immense sales of
territorial property, has been to throw the land into the hands of a
much greater number of small landed proprietors, who now number
3,426,083, so that, in spite of some large estates still existing,
especially in Andalusia, the average quantity of land held in Spain by
each proprietor would seem to be only about some 30 acres. Yet in
Galicia alone does there seem to have been any suffering caused by a too
great subdivision of land, and this perhaps was caused more by the
perpetuation of habits acquired while the land was burdened with
seignorial dues, when the occupier could neither quit his land nor sell
it. In this district the people are still miserably poor, their food and
houses are equally wretched, and nothing but the large emigration that
has taken and is now taking place will restore the province to any real
prosperity.
From what has been said in the preceding pages as to their ethnology,
the reader will not be surprised to learn that the different populations
of Spain have very different characteristics. The Galicians and
Asturians are the hewers of wood and drawers of water in Spain. They are
often fine, stalwart men, brave, and make excellent sailors. It is they
who reap the harvests for the more lazy Castilians and gather the
vintage of Oporto; it is they who do nearly all the hard work in all the
chief towns, not of Spain only, but also of Portugal. They are
proverbially honest and trustworthy as servants, though slow and
somewhat lacking in intelligence. Abroad, and as emigrants, they are
trusted as men of no other race are: in the countries of La Plata in
South America, the town-house, during the summer absence of the
proprietor and his family, is given over to a Gallego, as it stands, to
be taken care of, and rarely indeed is an article missing. The Asturian
partakes of the same general characteristics as the Galician, though in
a less marked degree. In the Montaneses, the inhabitants of the province
of Santander, we have the favourite nurses and female servants of
Madrid. The Asturias and Santander are remarkable for the number of
statesmen and economists they have produced in proportion to the
population. In the Basque Provinces we find an entirely different race,
not perhaps of so muscular a build, but active, and capable of great
endurance. Intelligent and proud of their ancient race and liberties,
they almost always retain their self-respect, and are for the most part
free from that cruelty towards animals which is so disfiguring a trait
in the character of other Spaniards. The Basques are generally found
among the upper and more trusted servants in civil life, in the army and
navy they make excellent petty officers; as seamen they are among the
best of Spain; as soldiers they are brave, enduring, capital marchers,
and as light infantry second to none of any nation. The Aragonese, like
the Galicians, count among the hard workers of Spain; generally of
shorter build, and very thick-set, but somewhat dull and very obstinate,
they are employed in the heaviest work. In literature they are known as
jurisconsults and historians. In Catalonia and Valencia we have the
bright Provencal race. A race apt for commerce and for manufacturing
industries; pushing, energetic, they gather to themselves the greater
part of the commerce, manufactures, and shopkeeping of all kinds, as far
as these are done by Spaniards, throughout the kingdom. Fiery in temper,
and not to be implicitly trusted, especially in Valencia, their
weapon is the knife, which they use sometimes on slight provocation; the
hired assassins and bandits of Spain have always been recruited thence.
Socialists and Federalists in politics, they have ever been disaffected
towards the central government. In Catalonia this may be the result of
memories of former independence; but it is curious to remark that
Barcelona and the cities of the Mediterranean, as compared with Cadiz
and Ferrol on the Atlantic, have played analogous parts in Spanish
history to those of Marseilles and Bordeaux in French; the Mediterranean
in each case being the home of the ultra-democrat and the man of the
"Montagne," and the Atlantic of the constitutionalists and the
Girondins. More to the south we find undoubtedly a greater mixture of
Moorish blood. The Andalusian is almost oriental in character, he is
fond of song and dance and colour, yet lazy withal, and disliking
sustained labour. He delights to deck himself with finery, and his women
with flowers; and his taste though glowing is never utterly debasing.
Excelling in wit and repartee, the Andalusian _gamin_ is the most
amusing rogue in Europe. He has a wild, fierce, momentary energy, and is
courteous and gracious in speech; his proverbs and songs are
innumerable, and sparkle with a peculiar wit and charm; but he
altogether lacks the more solid qualities of the men of the north.
Philosophers, orators, and poets rather than men of industry and science
are the product of these provinces. The Andalusian barely keeps up the
works which the more highly civilized Moors had done for him in
agriculture and in vineyard, but he does not improve upon them; and both
in mining and in wine cultivation, in manufactures, and in coasting
shipping, he allows nearly the whole of the trade and commerce of the
south to pass into the hands of foreigners or of Catalans. The men of
central Spain, except in the towns, the men of Leon, of the Castiles,
and of La Mancha, and in a less degree the men of Estremadura, have
changed but little for the last few centuries. They are Spaniards of the
type generally conceived by foreigners as applying to the whole nation.
Grave and slow of speech, exceedingly courteous unless their prejudices
are offended, fond of formality and proud of it; they are bigoted (but
less so than formerly), prejudiced, ignorant to an extreme, each
thinking his own town or village the _elite_ of the universe; content
with few comforts and preferring semi-starvation to exertion, the
Castilian is half ashamed of honest labour, but by no means averse to
corruption in any shape, and sees no disgrace in beggary. Cruel in the
extreme, when his passions are aroused, it is one of the misfortunes of
Spain that from the advantage of their elevated central physical
position, the Castilians, as warriors and statesmen, at all times among
the least civilized of her people, have been able to rule and control
the more civilized and more advanced (especially in political freedom
and administration) communities of the sea-board. It is a want of
discernment of this fact which makes so many of the picturesque
histories of Spain utterly fail in explaining the origin and the
progressive causes of her present condition. There are a few other
tribes in Spain which it may be worth while to notice, such as the
Gipsies, who seem still to keep themselves tolerably distinct in
Andalusia and in the south, but who in more than one instance have
completely coalesced with the Basques in the north. The Maragatos, the
trusted _Arrieros_ or muleteers of Leon, a remnant apparently of a wild
Berber tribe, left behind when the more civilized Moors retreated
southwards before the advance of the Christian conquerors; the Passiegos
near Bilbao, the men of the Sayago, the Hurdes of the Batuecas, the
Chuetas of Majorca, these and several minor tribes, remnants, perhaps,
of older populations whose ethnic affinities have never been made out,
are too few in numbers to affect the general population; but are of
interest to the ethnologist from the survivals of ancient laws and
customs which are still observed among them. One class, not a tribe, the
wretched commercial policy of Spain has developed to a greater extent
than in any other country, that of the smuggler or contrabandista. He
differs greatly in different districts, and even on the same line of
frontier. In some parts contrabandista is almost synonymous with bandit,
in others he is honest in his illegal trade, and more to be trusted with
immense sums than the officials who arrest him. In a small way he is a
type of the many contradictions of Spanish character and of "the things
of Spain."
[Illustration: CABALLEROS.
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[Illustration: DOMINIQUE, THE ESPADA.]
[Illustration: GIPSIES AT GRANADA.
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