THE FUTURE OF SPAIN
An Englishman who, from over thirty years' residence in Spain and close
connection with the country, numbered among her people some of his most
valued friends, thus speaks of the national characteristics:
"The Spanish and English characters are, indeed, in many points
strangely alike. Spain ranks as one of the Latin nations, and the
Republican orators of Spain are content to look to France for light and
leading in all their political combinations; but a large mass of the
nation, the bone and sinew of the country, the silent, toiling tillers
of the soil, are not of this way of thinking.... There is a sturdy
independence in the Spanish character, and an impatience of dictation
that harmonises more nearly with the English character than with that of
her Latin neighbours.... There is a gravity and reticence also in the
Spaniard that is absent from his mercurial neighbour, and which is,
indeed, much more akin to our cast of temper.
"True it is that our insular manners form at first a bar to our
intercourse with the Spaniard, who has been brought up in a school of
deliberate and stately courtesy somewhat foreign to our business turn of
mind; but how superficial this difference is may be seen by the strong
attachment Englishmen form to the country and her people, when once the
strangeness of first acquaintance has worn off; and those of us who know
the country best will tell you that they have no truer or more faithful
friends than those they have amongst her people."
Speaking of her labouring classes, and as a very large employer of
labour in every part of the Peninsula he had the best possible means of
judging, this writer says:
"The Spanish working man is really a most sober, hard-working being, not
much given to dancing, and not at all to drinking. They are
exceptionally clever and sharp, and learn any new trade with great
facility. They are, as a rule, exceedingly honest--perfect gentlemen in
their manners, and the lowest labourer has an _aplomb_ and ease of
manner which many a person in a much higher rank in this country might
envy. When in masses they are the quietest and most tractable workmen it
is possible to have to deal with. The peasant and working man, the real
bone and sinew of the country, are as fine a race as one might wish to
meet with--not free from defects--what race is?--but possessed of
excellent sterling qualities, which only require knowing to be
appreciated. I cannot say as much for the Government employees and
politicians. Connection with politics seems to have a corrupt and
debasing effect, which, although perhaps exaggerated in Spain, is,
unfortunately, not by any means confined to that country only."[3]
[3] _Commercial and Industrial Spain_, by George Higgin,
Mem. Inst. C. E., London, 1886.
In Spain to-day everything is dated from "La Gloriosa," the Revolution
of 1868, the "Day of Spanish Liberty," as it well deserves to be called,
and there is every reason to look back with pride upon that time;
because, after the battle of Alcoléa, when the cry raised in the Puerta
del Sol, _Viva Prim!_ was answered by the troops shut up in the
Government offices, and the people, swarming up the _rejas_ and the
balconies, fraternised with their brothers-in-arms, who had been
intended, could they have been trusted by their commanders, to shoot
them down, Madrid was for some days wholly in the hands of King Mob, and
of King Mob armed. The victorious troops were still at some distance,
the Queen and her _camarilla_ had fled across the frontier, the
Government had vanished, and the people were a law unto themselves. Yet
not one single act of violence was committed; absolute peace and
quietness, and perfect order prevailed. The ragged men in the street
formed themselves into guards: just as they were, they took up their
positions at the abandoned Palace, at the national buildings and
institutions; the troops were drawn up outside Madrid and its people
were its guardians. Committees of emergency were formed; everything went
on as if nothing unusual had happened, and not a single thing was
touched or destroyed in the Palace, left wholly at the mercy of the
sovereign people. The excesses which took place in some of the towns,
after the brutal assassination of Prim and the abdication of Amadeo,
were rather the result of political intrigue and the working of
interested demagogues on the passions of people misled and used as
puppets.
With the advance of commerce and industry, and the massing of workers in
the towns, has come, as in other countries, the harvest of the
demagogue. Strikes and labour riots now and then break out, and the
Spanish anarchist is not unknown. But the investment of their money in
industrial and commercial enterprises, so largely increasing, is giving
the people the best possible interest in avoiding disturbances of this,
or of any other, kind: and as knowledge of more enlightened finance is
penetrating to the working people themselves, the number who are likely
to range themselves on the side of law and order is daily increasing.
The improved railway and steamer communication with parts of the country
heretofore isolated, much of it only completed since this book was
begun--in fact, within the last few months--is bringing the northern and
western ports into prominence. Galicia now not only has an important
industry in supplying fresh fish for Madrid, but has a good increasing
trade with Europe and America. Pontevedra and Vigo, as well as
Villagarcia, are improving daily since the railway reached them. Fresh
fruit and vegetables find a ready market, and new uses for materials are
coming daily to the front. Esparto, the coarse grass which grows almost
everywhere in Spain, has long been an article of commerce, as well as
the algaroba bean--said to be the locust bean, on which John the Baptist
might have thriven--for it is the most fattening food for horses and
cattle, and produces in them a singularly glossy and beautiful coat.
This bean, which is as sweet as a dried date, is given, husk and all, to
the mules and horses at all the little wayside _ventas_, and is now used
in some of the patent foods for cattle widely known abroad. The stalk of
the maize is used for making smokeless powder, and the husks for two
kinds of glucose, two of cotton, three of gum, and two of oil. _Glucea
dextrina_ paste is used as a substitute for india-rubber. These products
of the maize, other than its grain, are employed in the preparation of
preserves, syrup, beer, jams, sweets, and drugs, and in the manufacture
of paper, cardboard, mucilage, oils and lubricants, paints, and many
other things. The imitation india-rubber promises to be the basis of a
most important industry. Mixed with equal portions of natural gum, it
has all the qualities of india-rubber, and is twenty-four per cent.
less in cost.
A great deal has been said about the depreciation of the value of the
peseta (franc) since the outbreak of the war with America, but this
unsatisfactory state of affairs is gradually mending; and the attention
of the Government is thoroughly awakened to it. The law of May 17, 1898,
and the Royal decree of August 9 provide that if the notes in
circulation of the Bank of Spain exceed fifteen hundred millions, gold
must be guaranteed to the half of the excess of circulation between
fifteen hundred and two thousand, not the half of all the notes in
circulation. The metal guarantee, silver and gold, must cover half of
the note circulation, when the latter is between fifteen hundred and two
thousand millions, and two-thirds when the circulation exceeds two
thousand. But the Bank has not kept this precept, and there has, in
fact, been an illegal issue of notes to the value of 6,752,813 pesetas.
So states the _Boletin de la Cámara de Comercio de España en la Gran
Bretáña_ of April 15, 1901.
The _Boletin_, after giving an account of the English custom of using
cheques against banking accounts, instead of dealing in metal or paper
currency only, as in Spain, strongly advocates the establishment of the
English method. It is only in quite recent years that there has been any
paper currency at all in Spain; the very notes of the Bank of Spain were
not current outside the walls of Madrid, and had only a limited
currency within.
Barcelona has long been called the Manchester of Spain, and in the days
before the "Gloriosa" it presented a great contrast to all the other
towns in the Peninsula. Its flourishing factories, its shipping, its
general air of a prosperous business-centre was unique in Spain. This is
no longer the case. Although the capital of Cataluña has made enormous
strides, and would scarcely now be recognised by those who knew it
before the Revolution, it has many rivals. Bilbao is already ahead of it
in some respects, and other ports, already mentioned, are running it
very close. Still, Barcelona is a beautiful city; its situation, its
climate, its charming suburbs full of delightful country houses, its
wealth of flowers, and its air of bustling industry, give a wholly
different idea of Spain to that so often carried away by visitors to the
dead and dying cities of which Spain has, unfortunately, too many.
It is becoming more common for young Spaniards to come to England to
finish their education, or to acquire business habits, and the study of
the English language is daily becoming more usual. In Spain, as already
remarked, no one speaks of the language of the country as "Spanish"; it
is always "Castellano," of which neither Valencian, Catalan, Galician,
still less Basque, is a dialect--they are all more or less languages in
themselves. But Castellano is spoken with a difference both by the
_pueblo bajo_ of Madrid and also in the provinces. The principal
peculiarities are the omission of the _d_--_prado_ becomes _praö_--in
any case the pronunciation of _d_, except as an initial, is very soft,
similar to our _th_ in _thee_, but less accentuated. The final _d_ is
also omitted by illiterate speakers; _Usted_ is pronounced _Uste_, and
even _de_ becomes _e_. _B_ and _v_ are interchangeable. One used to see,
on the one-horsed omnibus which in old times represented the locomotion
of Madrid, _Serbicio de omnibus_ quite as often as _Servicio_. Over the
_venta_ of El Espirito Santo on the road to Alcalá--now an outskirt of
Madrid--was written, _Aqui se veve bino y aguaardieñte_--meaning, _Aqui
se bebe vino_, etc. (Here may be drunk wine).
The two letters are, in fact, almost interchangeable in sound, but the
educated Spaniard never, of course, makes the illiterate mistake of
transposing them in writing. The sound of _b_ is much more liquid than
in English, and to pronounce _Barcelona_ as a Castilian pronounces it,
we should spell it _Varcelona_; the same with _Córdoba_, which to our
ears sounds as if written _Córdova_, and so, in fact, we English spell
it.
Spaniards, as a rule, speak English with an excellent accent, having all
the sounds that the English possess, taking the three kingdoms, England,
Scotland, and Ireland, into account.
Our _th_, which is unpronounceable to French, Italians, and Germans,
however long they may have lived in England, comes naturally to the
Spaniard, because in his own _d_, soft _c_, and _z_ he has the sounds of
our _th_ in "_th_ee" and "_th_in." His _ch_ is identical with ours, and
his _j_ and _x_ are the same as the Irish and Scotch pronunciation of
_ch_ and _gh_.
The Spanish language is not difficult to learn--at any rate to read and
understand--because there are absolutely no unnecessary letters, if we
except the initial _h_, which is, or appears to us, silent--and the
pronunciation is invariable. What a mine of literary treasure is opened
to the reader by a knowledge of Spanish, no one who is ignorant of that
majestic and poetic language can imagine. With the single exception of
Longfellow's beautiful rendering of the _Coplas de Manrique_, which is
absolutely literal, while preserving all the grace and dignity of the
original, I know of no translation from the Spanish which gives the
reader any real idea of the beauty of Spanish literature in the past
ages, nor even of such works of to-day as those of Juan Valera and some
others.
Picturesque and poetic ideas seem common to the Spaniard to-day, as
ever. Only the other day, in discussing the monument to be erected to
Alfonso XII. in Madrid, one of the newspapers reported the
suggestion--finally adopted, I think--that it should be an equestrian
statue of the young King, "with the look on his face with which he
entered Madrid after ending the Carlist war." What a picture it summons
to the imagination of the boy King--for he was no more--in the pride of
his conquest of the elements of disorder and of civil war, which had so
long distracted his beloved country--a successful soldier and a worthy
King!
Spain is a country of surprises and of contradictions; even her own
people seem unable to predict what may happen on the morrow. Those who
knew her best had come to despair of her emancipation at the very moment
when Prim and Topete actually carried the Revolution to a successful
issue. Again, after the miserable fiasco of the attempt at a republic,
the world, even in Spain itself, was taken by surprise by the peaceful
restoration of Alfonso XII.
I can, perhaps, most fitly end this attempt at showing the causes of
Spain's decay and portraying the present characteristics of this most
interesting and romantic nation by a quotation from the pen of one of
her sons. Don Antonio Ferrer del Rio, Librarian of the Ministry of
Commerce, Instruction, and Public Works, and member of the Reales
Academias de Buenas Letras of Seville and Barcelona, thus writes, in his
preface to his _Decadencia de España_, published in Madrid in 1850: "It
is my intention to point out the true origin of the decadence of Spain.
The imagination of the ordinary Spaniard has always been captivated by,
and none of them have failed to sing the praises of, those times in
which the sun never set on the dominion of its kings." While professing
not to presume to dispute this former glory, Señor Ferrer del Rio goes
on to say that he only aspires to get at the truth of his country's
subsequent decay. "There was one happy epoch in which Spain reached the
summit of her greatness--that of the Reyes Católicos, Don Fernando V.
and Doña Isabel I. Under their reign were united the sceptres of
Castilla, Aragon, Navarra, and Granada; the feudal system
disappeared--it had never extended far into the eastern limits of the
kingdom--the abuses in the Church were in great measure reformed, the
administration of the kingdom with the magnificent reign of justice
began to be consolidated, in the Cortes the powerful voice of the people
was heard; and almost at the same moment Christian Spain achieved the
conquest of the Moors, against whom the different provinces had been
struggling for eight centuries, and the immortal discovery of a new
world. Up to this moment the prosperity of Spain was rising; from that
hour her decadence began. With her liberty she lost everything, although
for some time longer her military laurels covered from sight her real
misfortunes." After referring to the defeat of the _Comuneros_, and the
execution of Padilla and his companions, champions of the people's
rights, he goes on to show that while the aristocracy had received a
mortal blow in the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella in the cause of
consolidating the kingdom and of internal order, they had retained
sufficient power to trample on the liberties of the people, while they
were not strong enough to form a barrier against the encroachments of
the absolute monarchs who succeeded, or to prevent the power eventually
lapsing into the hands of the Church. "Consequently, theocracy gained
the ascendency, formidably aided and strengthened by the odious tribunal
whose installation shadowed even the glorious epoch of Isabel and
Fernando, absorbing all jurisdiction, and interfering with all
government. Religious wars led naturally to European conflicts, to the
Spanish people being led to wage war against heresy everywhere, and the
nation--exhausted by its foreign troubles, oppressed internally under
the tyranny of the Inquisition, which, usurping the name of 'Holy,' had
become the right hand of the policy of Charles V., and the supreme power
in the Government of his grandson, Philip II.--lost all the precious
gifts of enlightenment in a blind and frantic fanaticism. The people
only awoke from lethargy, and showed any animation, to rush in crowds to
the _Autos da fé_ in which the ministers of the altar turned Christian
charity into a bleeding corpse, and reproduced the terrible scenes of
the Roman amphitheatre. Where the patricians had cried 'Christians to
the lions!' superstition shouted 'Heretics to the stake!' Humanity was
not less outraged than in the spectacle of Golgotha. Spanish monarchs
even authorised by their presence those sanguinary spectacles, while the
nobles and great personages in the kingdom thought themselves honoured
when they were made _alguiciles_, or familiars of the holy office.
Theocratic power preponderated, and intellectual movement became
paralysed, civilisation stagnated."
This has ever been the result of priestly rule. One can understand the
feeling of the liberal-minded Spaniard of to-day that, without wishing
to interfere with the charitable works inaugurated by the clergy, nor
desiring in any way to show disrespect to the Church, or the religion
which is dear to the hearts of the people, a serious danger lies, as the
Press is daily pointing out, in the religious orders, more especially
the Jesuits, obtaining a pernicious influence over the young,
undermining by a system of secret inquisition the teachings of science,
gaining power over the minds of the officers in the army, and
establishing a press agency which shall become a danger to the
constitution.
Spain's outlook seems brighter to-day than it has ever been since her
Golden Age of Isabella and Ferdinand; and it is the people who have
awakened, a people who have shown what power lies in them to raise their
beloved country to the position which is her right among the nations of
the world. But prophecy is vain in a country of which it has been said
"that two and two never make four." This year, if all go well meantime,
Alfonso XIII. will take the reins in his own hands--a mere boy, even
younger than his father was when called to the throne; than whom,
however, Spain has never had a more worthy ruler. But Alfonso XII. had
been schooled by adversity--he had to some extent roughed it amongst
Austrian and English boys. He came fresh from Sandhurst and from the
study of countries other than his own. To a naturally clever mind he had
added the invaluable lesson of a knowledge of the world as seen by one
of the crowd, not from the close precincts of a court and the elevation
of a throne.
For his son it may be said that he has been born and carefully educated
in a country where absolutism is dead, and by a mother who, as Regent,
has scrupulously observed the laws of the constitution. He will come, as
King, to a country which has known the precious boon of liberty too long
to part with it lightly; to a kingdom now, for the first time in
history, united as one people; where commerce and mutual interests have
taken the place of internecine distrust and hatred. It is only at the
present moment that this happy condition of things is spreading over the
country; each month, each week, giving fresh evidence of new industries
arising, of fresh capital invested in the development of the country. It
is in the sums so invested by the mass of the people that those who
believe in a bright future for Spain place their hopes; but we may all
of us wish the young monarch for whom his country is longing,
"God-speed."
PORTUGUESE LIFE IN TOWN AND COUNTRY