NATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS
Certain strong characteristics of the Spanish people, with which the
history of the world makes us well acquainted, are as marked in this
hurrying age of railway and telegraph as ever they were in the past. One
of the stupid remarks one constantly hears made by the unthinking
tourist is: "Spain is a country where nothing ever changes." This is as
true of some of the national traits of character as it is false in the
sense in which the speaker means it. He has probably picked it out of
some handbook.
Chief among these traits is dignity. The most casual visitor is
impressed by it, sometimes very much to his annoyance, whether he finds
it among the unlettered muleteers of Castile, the labourers of Valencia,
or the present proprietor of some little Old-World _pueblo_ off the
ordinary route. The _mayoral_ of the diligence in the old times, the
domestic servant of to-day, the señora who happens to sell you fish, or
the señor who mends your boots, all strike the same note--an absolute
incapacity for imagining that there can be any inequality between
themselves and any other class, however far removed from them by the
possession of wealth or education. Wealth, in fact, counts for nothing
in the way of social rank; a poor _hidalgo_ is exactly as much respected
as a rich one, and he treats his tenants, his servants, all with whom he
comes in contact, as brothers of the same rank in the sight of God as
himself.
_Bajo el Rey ninguno_ is their proverb, and its signification, that
"beneath the King all are equal," is one that is shown daily in a
hundred ways. The formula with which you are expected to tell the
beggars--with whom, unfortunately, Spain is once more overrun--that you
have nothing for them, is a lesson in what someone has well called the
"aristocratic democracy" of Spain: "Pardon me, for the love of God, my
brother," or the simple _Perdone me usted_, using precisely the same
address as you would to a duke. It is no uncommon thing to hear two
little ragged urchins, whose heads would not reach to one's elbow,
disputing vigorously in the street with a _Pero no, Señor, Pero si,
Señor_, as they bandy their arguments.
English travellers are sometimes found grumbling because the señor who
keeps a wayside _posada_, or even a more pretentious inn in one of the
towns, does not stand, hat in hand, bowing obsequiously to the wayfarer
who deigns to use the accommodation provided.
This is one of the things in which Spain, to her honour, _is_
unchanged. The courtesy of her people, high or low, is ingrained, and if
foreign--perhaps especially English and American--travellers do not
always find it so, the fault may oftenest be laid to their own ignorance
of what is expected of them, and to what is looked upon as the absolute
boorishness of their own manners.
When a Spaniard goes into a shop where a woman is behind the counter, or
even to a stall in the open market, he raises his hat in speaking to her
as he would to the Duquesa de Tal y Fulano, and uses precisely the same
form of address. The shopman lays himself at the feet of his lady
customers--metaphorically only, fortunately, _Á los pies de V.,
Señora!_--with a bow worthy of royalty. She hopes that "God may remain
with his worship" as she bids him the ordinary _Adios_ on going away,
and he, with equal politeness, expresses a hope that she may "go in
God's keeping," while he once more lays himself at the señora's feet.
All these amenities do not prevent a little bargaining, the one asking
more than he means to take, apparently for the purpose of appearing to
give way perforce to the overmastering charms of his customer, who does
not disdain to use either her fan or her eyes in the encounter. The old
woman will bargain just as much, but always with the same politeness.
When foreigners walk in and abruptly ask for what they want with an air
of immense superiority, as is the custom in our country, they are not
unnaturally looked upon as _muy bruto_, and at the best it is accounted
for by their being rude heretics from abroad, and knowing no better.
In Madrid and some of the large towns it is possible that the people
have become accustomed to our apparent discourtesy, just as in some
places--Granada especially--spoiled by long intimacy with tourists, the
beggars have become importunate, and to some extent impudent; but in
places a little removed from such a condition of modern "civilisation,"
the effect produced by many a well-meaning but ordinary Saxon priding
himself on his superiority, and without any intention of being ill-bred
or ill-mannered, is that of disgust and contemptuous annoyance.
No Spaniard will put up with an overbearing or bullying manner, even
though he may not understand the language in which it is expressed; it
raises in him all the dormant pride and prejudice which sleep beneath
his own innate courtesy, and he probably treats the offending traveller
with the profound contempt he feels for him, if with nothing worse. A
little smiling and good-natured chaff when things go wrong, as they so
often do in travelling, or when the leisurely expenditure of time, which
is as natural to the Spaniard as it is irritating to our notions of how
things ought to move, will go infinitely farther to set things right
than black looks and a scolding tongue, even in an unknown language.
When English people come back from Spain complaining of discourtesy, or
what they choose to call insult, I know very well on whose head to fit
the accusing cap, and it is always those people whose super-excellent
opinion of themselves, and of their infinite importance at home, makes
them certain of meeting with some such experience among a people to whom
the mere expression "a snob" is by no means to be understood.
That railway travelling in Spain calls for a great exercise of patience
from those accustomed to Flying Dutchmen and such-like expresses is
quite true; though, by the way, many of the lines are in French hands,
and served by French officials. It may safely be said, however, even at
the present day, that those who are always in a hurry would do well to
choose some other country for their holiday jaunt. A well-known English
engineer, of French extraction, trying to get some business through in
Madrid, once described himself as feeling "like a cat in hell, without
claws." Perhaps the ignorance of the language, which constituted his
clawless condition, was a fortunate circumstance for him. But that was a
good while ago, and Madrid moves more quickly now.
Another characteristic of the Spaniard which awakens the respect and
admiration of those who know enough of his past and present history to
be aware of it is his courage: not in the least resembling the
excitement and rush of mere conflict, nor the theatrical display of what
goes by the name of "glory" among some of his neighbours; but the cool
courage, the invincible determination which holds honour as the ideal to
be followed all the same whether or not any person beyond the actor will
know of it, and an unquestioning obedience to discipline, which call
forth the ungrudging admiration of Englishmen, proud as we are of such
national stories as that of our own _Little Revenge, The Wreck of the
"Birkenhead,"_ or of "plucky little Mafeking," amongst hundreds of
others. Spaniards are rich in such inspiring memories, reaching from the
earliest days of authentic history to the terrible episodes of the late
war with America. The story of Cervera's fleet at Santiago de Cuba is
one to make the heart of any nation throb with pride in the midst of
inevitable tears.
Again and again in reading Spanish history do we come upon evidences of
this nobility of courage and disinterested patriotism. It was the
Spaniard Pescara who brushed the French army of observation from the
line of the Adda, and marched his own forces and the German troops to
the relief of Pavía. All were unpaid, unclothed, unfed; yet when an
appeal was made to the Spaniards, Hume tells us that they abandoned
their own pay and offered their very shirts and cloaks to satisfy the
Germans, and "the French were beaten before the great battle was
fought." They did precisely the same in the days of Mendizábal.
Again, in the height of Barbarossa's power, when Charles V., hoisting
the crucifix at his masthead, led his crusading Spaniards against
Goletta, and it fell, after a month's desperate siege, without pause or
rest the troops, half dead with heat and thirst, pressed on to Tunis to
liberate twenty thousand Christian captives. It was a splendid
achievement, for the campaign was fought in the fierce heat of an
African summer. Every barrel of biscuit, every butt of water, had to be
brought by sea from Sicily, and as there were no draught animals, the
soldiers themselves dragged their guns and all their provisions. It is,
as we well know, no light task to find six weeks' supply for thirty
thousand men with all our modern advantages; but these Spaniards did it
when already exhausted, half fed, burnt up by the fierce African sun,
and in face of an enemy well supplied with artillery and ammunition.
In the miserable time of Philip II., a garrison of two hundred men held
out for months against a Turkish army of twenty thousand men at
Mers-el-Keber; and the same heroic story is repeated at Malta, when the
enemy, after firing sixteen thousand cannon shots in one month against
the Christian forts, abandoned the siege in despair. Meanwhile the
unspeakable bigot, Philip, was wasting his time in processions,
rogations, and fasts, for the relief of the town, while he stirred no
finger to help it in any effective manner.
These are stories by no means few and far between; the whole history of
the race is full of such. We read of one town and garrison of eight
thousand souls, abandoned by their king, starved, and without clothes or
ammunition. Reduced at last to two thousand naked men, they stood in the
breach to be slain to a man by the conquering Turk. Conqueror only in
name, after all; for he who conquers is he who lives in history for a
great action, and whose undaunted courage fires other souls long after
he is at rest.
"But all this is very ancient history, of the days of Spain's greatness;
now she is a decadent nation," says the superficial observer. The column
of the _Dos de Mayo_ on the Prado of Madrid, with its yearly memorial
mass, shows whether that spirit is dead, or in danger of dying. The
second of May is well called the "Day of Independence"; it was, in fact,
the inauguration of the War of Independence, in which Spain gained
enough honour to satisfy the proudest of her sons. The French had
entered Madrid under pretence of being Spain's allies against Portugal,
and Murat, once settled there to his own perfect satisfaction, made no
secret of his master's intention to annex the whole peninsula. The
imbecile King, Charles IV., had abdicated; his son, Ferdinand VII., was
practically a captive in France. The country had, in fact, been sold to
Napoleon, neither more nor less, by the infamous Godoy, favourite of the
late King.
A riot broke out among the people on discovering that the French were
about to carry off the Spanish _Infantes_. The blood of some
comparatively innocent Frenchmen was shed, and the base governor and
magistrates of Madrid allowed Murat to make his own terms, which were
nothing less, in fact, than the dispersion of the troops, who were
ordered to clear out of their barracks, and hand them over to the
French. The two artillery officers, Daoiz and Valarde, with one infantry
officer named Ruiz, and a few of the populace, refused, and, all
unaided, attempted to hold the barracks of Monteleon against the French
army of invasion! The end was certain; but little recked these Spaniards
of the old type. Daoiz and Valarde were killed, the former murdered by
French bayonets after being wounded, on the cannon by which they had
stood alone against the whole power of the French troops; Ruiz also was
shot. On the following day, Murat led out some scores of the patriots
who had dared to oppose him, and shot them on the spot of the Prado now
sacred to their memory. Thus was the torch of the Peninsular War
lighted. As one man the nation rose; the labourer armed himself with his
agricultural implements, the workman with his tools; without leaders,
nay, in defiance of those who should have led them, the people sprang to
action, and, with England's help, the usurper was driven from the throne
of France, and finally caged in St. Helena. But it is never forgotten
that Spain--these two or three sons of hers preferring honour to
life--has the glory of having been the first to oppose and check the
man and the nation that aspired to tyrannise over Europe.
It is not too much to say that the conduct of every individual in
Cervera's fleet at Santiago de Cuba showed that the Spaniard's
magnificent courage, his absolute devotion to duty, and his disregard of
death are no whit less to-day than when those two thousand naked men
stood in the breach to be slain in the name of their country's honour.
The _Oquendo_, already a wreck, coming quietly out of her safe moorings
in obedience to the insane orders of the Government in Madrid, steering
her way with absolute coolness so as to clear the sunken _Diamante_, to
face certain and hideous death, is a picture which can never fade from
memory. It was said at the time by their enemies that there was not a
man in the Spanish fleet that did not deserve the Victoria Cross; and
this was all the more true because there was not even a forlorn hope: it
was obedience to orders in the absolute certainty of death, and, what
was harder still, with full knowledge of the utter uselessness of the
sacrifice.
It is difficult to imagine that anyone can read the record of this
heroic passage in the history of the Spain of to-day without a throb of
admiration and pity. No wonder that the generous enemy went out of their
way to do honour to the melancholy remnant of heroes as they mounted the
sides of the American ironclads, prisoners of war.
Cervantes gave to the world a new adjective when he wrote his romance
of _The Ingenious Gentleman of La Mancha_--a world in which the
filibusters are those of commerce, the pirates those of trade. When we
English call an action "quixotic," we do not exactly mean disapproval,
but neither, certainly, do we intend admiration; unless it be that of
other-worldliness which it is well to affect, however far we may be from
practising it ourselves. It is, at best, something quite unnecessary, if
acknowledged to be admirable in the abstract. The quixotic are rarely
successful, and success is the measure by which everything is judged
to-day. Be that as it may, the more intimately one knows Spain, the more
one becomes aware that what is with us an amiable quality of somewhat
dubious value, is one of those which go to make up the Spaniard in every
rank of life. His chivalry, his fine sense of honour, are nothing if not
quixotic, as we understand the word; and just as in Scotland alone does
one appreciate the characters in Sir Walter Scott's novels, so in Spain
does one feel that, with due allowance for a spirit of kindly
caricature, Don Quijote de la Mancha is not only possible, but it is a
type of character as living to-day as it was when the genius of
Cervantes distilled and preserved for all time that most quaint,
lovable, inconsequent, and chivalrous combination of qualities which
constitute a Spanish gentleman. Among her writers, her thinkers, her
workers--nay, even now and then among her politicians--we come upon
traits which remind us vividly of the ingenious gentleman and perfect
knight of romance.
But this estimate of the Spanish character differs a good deal from the
pictures drawn of it by the casual tourist; and it is scarcely
surprising that it should be so. It has been well said that "the
contrast between the ideal of honour and the practice of pecuniary
corruption has always been a peculiar feature of Spain and her
settlements." If we hear one thing oftener than another said of Spain,
it is fault-finding with her public men; the evils of bribery,
corruption, and self-seeking amongst what should be her statesmen, and,
above all, her Government employees, are pointed out, and by none more
than by Spaniards themselves. There is a good deal of truth at the
bottom of these charges; they are the melancholy legacy of the years of
misrule and of the darkness through which the country has struggled on
her difficult way. No one looks for the highest type of character in any
country among its party politicians. The creed that good becomes evil if
it is carried out under one _régime_, and evil good under another, is
not calculated to raise the moral perception; and it is only when a
politician has convictions and principles which are superior to any
office-holding, and will break with his party a hundred times sooner
than stultify his own conscience, that he earns the respect of
onlookers. There are, and have been, many such men among the politicians
of Spain whose names remain as watchwords with her people; but they
have too often stood alone, and were not strong enough to leaven the
mass and raise the whole standard of political integrity. Some of the
highest and best men, moreover, have thrown down their tools and
withdrawn from contact with a life which seemed to them tainted. But
because Spain has done much in overthrowing her evil rulers and is
struggling upwards towards the light, we expect wonders, and will not
give time for what must always be a slow and difficult progress.
In Spain, everyone is a politician. The schoolboy, who with us would be
thinking of nothing more serious than football, aspires to sum up the
situation and give his opinion of the public men as if he were an
ex-prime minister at least. These orators of the _cafés_ and the street
corners are delighted to find a foreigner on whom they can air their
unfledged opinions, and the traveller who can speak or understand a few
words of Spanish comes back with wonderful accounts of what "a Spaniard
whom I met in the train told me." In any case, no one ever says as hard
things of his countrymen as a Spaniard will say of those who do not
belong to the particular little political clique which has the extreme
honour of counting himself as one of its number. These cliques--for one
cannot call them parties--are innumerable, called, for the most part,
after one man, of whom no one has heard except his particular friends,
_Un Señor muy conocido en su casa, sobre todo á la hora de comer_, as
their saying is: "A gentleman very well known in his own house,
especially at dinner-time."
[Illustration: PAST WORK]
[Illustration: KNIFE-GRINDER]
Ford is answerable for many of the fixed ideas about Spain which it
seems quite impossible to remove. Much that may have been true in the
long ago, when he wrote his incomparable Guide Book, has now passed away
with the all-conquering years; but still all that he ever said is
repeated in each new book with unfailing certainty. Much as he really
loved Spain, it must be confessed that he now and then wrote of her with
a venom and bitterness quite at variance with his usual manner of
judging things. It is in great part due to him that so much
misunderstanding exists as to the Spanish custom of "offering" what is
not intended to be accepted. If that peculiarity ever existed--for my
part, I have never met with it at any time--it does so no longer. When a
Spaniard speaks of his house as that of "your Grace" (_su casa de
Usted_), it is simply a figure of speech, which has no more special
meaning than our own "I am delighted to see you," addressed to some one
whose existence you had forgotten, and will forget again; but nothing
can exceed the generous hospitality often shown to perfect strangers in
country districts where the accommodation for travellers is bad, when
any real difficulty arises.
It is customary, for instance, in travelling, when you open your
luncheon-basket, to offer to share its contents with any strangers who
may chance to be fellow-passengers. Naturally, it is merely a form of
politeness, and, in an ordinary way, no one thinks of accepting
it--everyone has his own provision, or is intending to lunch somewhere
on the way; but it is by no means an empty form. If it should chance, by
some accident, that you found yourself without--as has happened to me in
a diligence journey which lasted twenty hours when it was intended only
to occupy twelve--the Spanish fellow-travellers will certainly insist on
your accepting their offer. Also, if they should be provided with fresh
fruit--oranges, dates, or figs--and you are not, their offer to share is
by no means made with the hope or expectation that you will say _Muchas
gracias_, the equivalent of "No, thank you."
What is really difficult and embarrassing sometimes is to avoid having
pressed on your acceptance some article which you may have admired, in
your ignorance of the custom, which makes it the merest commonplace of
the Spaniard to "place it at your disposition," or to say: "It is
already the property of your Grace." Continued refusal sometimes gives
offence. The custom of never doing to-day what you can quite easily put
off till to-morrow is, unfortunately, still a common trait of Spanish
character; but as the Spaniard is rapidly becoming an alert man of
business, it is not likely that that will long remain one of the
national characteristics. Time in old days seemed of very little value
in a country where trade was looked upon as a disgrace, or at least as
unfitting any one to enter the charmed circle of the first _Grandeza_;
but that is of the past now in Spain, as in most countries. To be sure,
it has not there become fashionable for ladies to keep bonnet-shops or
dress-making establishments, nor to open afternoon tea-rooms or
_orchaterias_, still less to set up as so-called financiers, as it has
with us. However, even that may come to pass in the struggle for "_el_
high life," of which some of the Spanish writers complain so bitterly.
Imagination absolutely refuses, however, to see the Spanish woman of
rank in such surroundings.
For the rest, the Spanish woman, wherever you meet her, and in whatever
rank of society, is devout, naturally kind-hearted and sympathetic,
polite, and entirely unaffected; a good mother, sister, daughter;
hard-working and frugal, if she be of the lower class; fond above all
things of gossip, and of what passes for conversation; light-hearted,
full of fun and harmless mischief; born a coquette, but only with that
kind of coquetry which is inseparable from unspoiled sex, with no taint
of sordidness about it; and, before all things, absolutely free from
affectation. Their own expression, _muy simpática_, gives better than
any other the charm of the Spanish woman, whether young or old, gentle
or simple.
It was the possession of all these qualities in a high degree by Doña
Isabel II. that covered the multitude of her sins, and made all who
came within her influence speak gently of her, and think more of excuses
than of blame. It is these qualities which give so much popularity to
her daughter, the Infanta Isabel, who, like her mother, is above all
things _muy Española_. That the Spanish woman is passionate, goes
without saying; one only has to watch the quick flash of her
eye--"throwing out sparks," as their own expression may be
translated--to be aware of that. While the eyes of the men are for the
most part languid, only occasionally flashing forth, those of the women
are rarely quiet for a moment; they sparkle, they languish, they
flame--a whole gamut of expression in one moment of time; and it must be
confessed that they look upon man as their natural prey.