their native localities. ‘Mi paisano,’ my fellow-countryman, or rather
my fellow-countyman, fellow-parishioner, does not mean Spaniard, but
Andalucian, Catalonian as the case may be. When a Spaniard is asked,
‘Where do you come from?’ the reply is, ‘_Soy hijo de Murcia--hijo de
Granada_’--‘I am a son of Murcia--a son of Granada,’ &c.” This is
strictly analogous to the “children of Israel,” the “Bene” of the
Spanish Moors, and to this day the Arabs of Cairo call themselves
_children_ of that town; and just as the Milesian Irishman is a “boy
from Tipperary,” &c., and ready to fight with anyone who is so also,
against all who are not of that ilk: similar, too, is the clanship of
the highlander: indeed, everywhere, not perhaps to the same extent as in
Spain, the being of the same province or town creates a powerful
freemasonry: the parties cling together like old school-fellows. It is a
_home_, and really binding feeling. To the spot of their birth, all
their recollections, comparisons, and eulogies are turned: nothing, to
them, comes up to their particular province; that is their real country.
“_La Patria_,” means Spain at large, is a subject of declamation, fine
words, _palabras_--palaver, in which all, like Orientals, delight to
indulge, and to which their grandiloquent idioms lends itself readily:
but their patriotism is still largely parochial, and self is the centre
of Spanish gravity.
[Illustration: A NATIVE OF CATALONIA.]
And so it happens that if the Catalan has scant liking for the romantic,
pleasure-loving, guitar-thrumming Andalucian, the Andalucian, on the
other hand, regards the Catalan as a hard, pedantic and unpoetic
mechanic. As a matter of fact, he is straightforward without being hard,
grave without pedantry, hospitable without ostentation; and, like all
Spaniards, he is a poet. Poetry, as a national characteristic, is an
accident of climate. Here is Barcelona, the Manchester of Spain, a hive
of manufacturing industry, rejoicing in one of the most lovely sites in
Europe, possessed of a climate equal to that of Naples, and with its
beauty untarnished by the hand of time, or the artificer. Such an
atmosphere, such skies, such stars make a people poets against their
wills. I do not imply a charge against the Spaniards that they write
poetry--that is an entirely different thing. They may--they do, happily,
for the most part--die with all their poetry in them; but they are none
the less poets; and indeed they are, as Oscar Wilde argued, the better
poets on that account. For the Spanish temperament rises superior to the
temptations of environment. If it were my good fortune to live
perpetually beneath that star-spangled sky, I believe I could not resist
the impulse to write verse. If for no other reason than for this alone I
doff my beaver to the unversifying Catalan.
There is, however, another characteristic which accounts for their
prosperity, and excuses the tone of superiority they adopt towards the
people of the neighbouring provinces--they are not afraid of work. Since
the thirteenth century, when the Catalans led the way to the whole world
in maritime conquest and jurisprudence, they have never thought trade to
be a degradation, but rather have ennobled it by their honesty and
enterprise. The Spanish race generally has lacked the trading spirit. An
intelligent American writer, who has studied the causes which have
brought Spain down from her ancient eminence in the affairs of Europe,
finds them in a position different from that which is generally
supposed. “Pride, a weak monarch, a dissolute court, religious
intolerance--all these,” says our transpontine critic, “are admirable
starting points from which to prove a nation’s decline. But Spain has
been by no means unique in the possession of these requisites. A close
examination of intrigue, and counter-intrigue, and plot at the capital
reveals a condition different from that of some other countries only in
being a little later in occurrence. In
[Illustration: THE CASCADE, BARCELONA.]
fact, all these are mere effects; the cause is the absence of that which
has developed the great nations of the earth, the cause on which
civilisation rests, the great primitive developing agency--the trading
spirit. For seven centuries she was a battlefield. During that time,
while she was keeping the Mohammedan wolf from the door of Europe, there
was no chance for the development of the trading spirit. What growth
came in a measure to some of the coast cities was the result of local
commercial relations finding an extension and expansion between nation
and nation. The spirit of getting by the good right arm grew, and
produced its tradition; while the precarious cultivation of land for
food, an occupation ever more and more removed from the leaders, became
the work of an ignorant and unrespected class.
“With the absence of trade goes the absence of knowledge of the outside
world; and though a certain general knowledge was brought back by the
Europe-conquering soldiers of Charles and Philip, it was a knowledge of
how easily gain could be made in the old way, rather than a stimulus to
the merchant.
“Without the logical traditions of buying and selling, raised up through
generations, Spain could hardly avoid the errors of government which the
want of such traditions bring. She could scarcely hope not to become the
victim of each and every scheme for a financial millennium, as a nation,
which we are all accustomed to smile at when played in the more
self-evident form of personal charlatanry. And, most of all, the dignity
of work has been lost. The Spanish labourer pitied himself--and was
pitied.
“Up to the beginning of the Cuban war, however, a better condition had
been developing. Education, and a knowledge of the outside world, were
bringing home to this nation that to be the proudest man in the world it
is well to have a basis for that pride in tangible rather than
traditional things; and of so excellent a nature have I found the
Spaniard when one knows him, that I cannot help believing in his
ultimate development.
“But few, I know, cross the threshold of the Spanish house to find how
good a man at heart the owner is. He is proud, it is true, and does not
much favour the stranger; but it is the pride of a reserved nature, not
of a weak one.”
There is indeed much truth to be found in this view of the situation.
Spain has never been a great _commercial_ nation; she
[Illustration: LYRIC THEATRE.]
[Illustration: EXHIBITION HALL.]
[Illustration: PRINCIPAL THEATRE]
is, in fact, only now entering for the first time the commercial arena.
No nation in Europe commenced her career on a trade basis. Conquest in
the early ages was the only acknowledged industry; and the empires of
Carthage, Phœnicia, Rome, Spain, and Great Britain all rose to greatness
by the right of might. England was a young nation when Spain commenced
to decline after centuries of conquest and supremacy, and England was
ripe to receive the impression of the value of commerce as a maker and
sustainer of kingdoms. Germany did not become a great power until the
supremacy of trade was universally acknowledged; America was cradled in
a counting house, and brought up in the atmosphere of profit and loss.
[Illustration: SEÑOR BÁRRIS’S HOUSE, BARCELONA.]
Barcelona, of all the cities of Spain, has never been blind to the
advantages of commerce; and to-day, the city, in its bustling activity,
its red-hot life, its ceaseless movement and sense of prosperity
resembles all the great commercial cities of the world--London, New
York, Melbourne, Liverpool, and Chicago. But in one respect it more
nearly approaches London in the resemblance, by reason of an
ill-favoured side of approach. I have often met at Tilbury or
Liverpool--but Tilbury especially--friends who have been on their first
visit to our Metropolis, and I have begged them, as a personal favour,
not to form any opinion of the city from the railway-carriage windows.
The squalor and dreariness of the eastern approach to London is only
mildly reproduced by the southern environs of Barcelona. Indeed, when
one makes one’s first acquaintance with it, it is difficult to believe
that it is the boastedly first city of Spain. Yet the boast is not
unjustified in so far, at least, as the concerns of every-day life,
polity and progress are concerned. When once the visitor is within the
circle of her brighter ways, he will look in vain for any of the
smudginess whose kingdom and on-coming have been heralded by smudge; he
will speedily recognise the fact that here is rolling by him a greater
volume of trade than in all the other great centres of Spanish
commercial life put together. Everywhere in Barcelona there is apparent
the lively, virile animation, bred of a prosperous and forceful
existence; and it is this which constitutes one of the great charms of
the place. In no town-ways of Spain, not even in those of Seville, is
the visitor so well rewarded as in Barcelona.
On one of my visits to Barcelona, I arrived in the city during the
labour riots last year. Trains had been fired at and attacked with
stones, so the windows of the carriages were barricaded, and all
precautions were taken for the safety of the passengers. We were
allowed, however, to enter the station unmolested; and although the
crowded streets were paraded by the military, and a further outburst of
public feeling was expected, the force of the human volcano had
evidently expended itself before our arrival. Much property had been
damaged; and, on all sides, one saw windows riddled with bullets, or
smashed with stones, and evidences that the industrious and law-abiding
Barcelonian is a Spaniard when roused. There was an alertness akin to
menace in the flashing glances that inspected us that seemed to threaten
all kind of unpleasant eventualities. But we walked through the streets
in perfect safety; and my good friend, who had driven in from his
country house to meet me, along roads patrolled by soldiers and skirted
by turbulent rioters, apologised delightfully for the insecurity of the
highways which rendered him unable to offer me the hospitality of his
house until the following day. The risk he had run in coming in to
Barcelona to welcome me did not occur to him. I was his friend--he had
not given a thought
[Illustration: SNAPSHOT IN SEÑOR BÁRRIS’S GARDEN, BARCELONA.]
for his skin. As we promenaded the streets, he approached men and asked
them questions about the riot, and the scowl disappeared from their
faces as a sea-mist lifts from the cliffs as they gave us the required
information. I have written that the Spaniard’s good manners are the
result not of an acquired and superficial politeness, but are derived
from a natural and national courtesy that is inbred in the race. There
is in their attentions a vein of selfishness which is half its charm. A
stranger will do you a courtesy for which your thanks can only half pay
him--the other half-payment he himself contributes for the service. He
has pleased you, and in so doing he has pleased himself. And one feels
that he has pleasure in his own unselfishness. It is impossible to be
many hours in Spain without recognising this delightful trait. You step
into a shop and inquire the way to the cathedral. The friendly
shopkeeper places himself immediately at your disposal. He takes down
his _capa_, and personally conducts you to the desired spot. It is the
same always. You ask for your bearings of a member of the famous
_guardia civil_, and the pair will solemnly march you to your
destination; or the first pedestrian you meet proceeding in the opposite
direction, faces about on the instant, and retraces his steps through
the length or breadth of a town to put you on the right road.
We have no force in this country that corresponds with the _Guardia
Civil_; perhaps the Royal Irish Constabulary are their nearest
counterpart in organisation and fine _morale_. This body, which is
composed of 20,000 foot and 500 mounted guards, are neither soldiers nor
policemen, but they combine the duties of both. Their splendid physique,
and smart, soldierly bearing--only the best men in the Spanish Army are
admitted to the ranks of the Civil Guards--give one a feeling of
security and a sense of order that nothing else seems to impart. They
are stationed in every town and small village throughout the country.
They patrol the roads, they accompany every train, and are to be seen at
every station; they are to be encountered everywhere, and always in
pairs. Dressed in blue tunic and trousers of the same colour, with light
buff-coloured belts, cocked hats, and top-boots, they carry their
well-polished rifles in a manner which engenders the respect of
evil-doers. In contrast with the leisurely life around them, they stride
through the traffic, in it, but not of it--a class apart. They are,
indeed, apart in habit
[Illustration: “RAMBLA DE LAS FLORES,” BARCELONA.]
as well as in appearance. Their association with the outer world is
almost entirely official. They live in barracks, mess together, and hold
themselves aloof. Their _esprit de corps_ is as perfect as their
discipline; they cannot be bribed, nor induced to accept a reward for
any service they may render you. The safety of property and life in
Spain is in their keeping; and it may be said without exaggeration that
they have done more to establish order in the Peninsula than any other
body.
Barcelona, besides being a busy, wide-awake, and rapidly-growing
commercial and industrial centre, contrasting strongly with some other
Spanish cities that still seem to be shrouded in the mists of the middle
ages, has also acquired the reputation of being a beautiful
city--beautiful, of course, in the modern sense; for, where modern
enterprise rules, the old-time beauty is apt to take flight. Its
situation, on a slope running down from the mountains to the sea, is
both healthful and picturesque. Its streets and boulevards are wide,
regular, and well made; and its main avenue, the _Rambla_, has been
styled, not without justice, the “_Unter den Linden_” of Barcelona. This
line of promenade, formed by the _Ramblas_ of _Santa Monica_, _del
Centro_, _de San José_, _de Estudios_, _de Canaletas_, and the _Paseo de
Gracia_ is a veritable triumph of boulevarding. Europe may be challenged
to produce anything finer. It runs from the port right through the heart
of the town, and out into the country, a practically uninterrupted
series of carriage drives and public promenades, shaded nearly all the
way by over-arching plane-trees. The lower portions are lined with
handsome shops and cafés, with the best hotels and theatres; and all the
upper reach--the _Gracia Paseo_--with the imposing blocks of houses of
the Ensanche, the residential region, _par excellence_, of the city.
The little _Rambla de San José_, too, may justly be accorded its more
popular name of “_de las Flores_:” for here each morning is held the
flower market, when both sides of the broad central walk are lined with
stacks heaped up in dazzling profusion with all the floral wealth which
southern sunlight, nature, and art can produce. Here, amid the splendid
highways of the city, one may find a continual occupation for both eye
and mind in the ever-shifting and gorgeous colouring, and in all the
movements of the colossal game of life. The hour does not signify--early
or late, morning, afternoon, or night, it is all one--for Barcelona folk
seem to be able to do without sleep; and at all times the air is
deliciously soft, and yet so fresh, from the sea and from the
hill-country which backs up the city, that one is ever impelled onwards.
In the full artery of the life of it, one comes across the _Lonja_, the
_Casas Consistoriales and Diputacion_, but one looks in vain for the
great cathedral, the Churches of _Santa Maria del Mar_, _Santa Ana_,
_Santa Maria del Pino_, the old Benedictine Monastery of _San Pablo del
Campo_, the Roman remains, and the fine Renaissance houses. These are
not for those who run to see, but are hidden away, tucked out of sight,
so to speak, in a most vexatious and puzzling manner.
In Barcelona, we have the old town with its narrow, tortuous lanes, and
the new town with its streets laid out at right angles, its handsome
houses, and its air of general prosperity. The trade of the city is ever
increasing, and its prospects are almost illimitable. The wealth of the
city has overflowed into the handsome suburb of _Paseo de Gracia_, with
its villas and miniature palaces, and its population of nearly 40,000
inhabitants. The port of Barcelona has, in the process of improvement,
effaced the historical Muralla del Mar; and its site is now occupied by
a broad, handsome quay, laid out with palms, and enriched with a
wonderful stone and bronze column, 197 feet high, surmounted with a
statue of Columbus. More handsome and lofty houses are to be found in
the _Plaza Real_; the finest
[Illustration: THE COLON (COLUMBUS) PROMENADE, BARCELONA.]
shops are situated in the _Calle de Fernando_; while the _Calle Ancha_
is given over to banks and insurance offices. In the _Plaza del Palacio_
is the beautiful fountain in Carrara marble representing the four
Catalonian provinces of Barcelona, Lérida, Tarragona, and Gerona.
Another superb piece of street ornamentation is the Columbus Memorial,
which was erected in 1889. It is built at the end of the Rambla in the
PLAZA DE LA PAZ, and has the picturesque silhouette of Montjuich for a
background. The pedestal, which is octagonal in form, rests on a
circular base, flanked by four spacious ledges, decorated with eight
lions, and from it rises the iron column, crowned by a magnificent
Corinthian capital supporting a bronze globe; above which, in graceful
pose, is seen the statue of the immortal discoverer, also in bronze.
Many historical and allegorical statues embellish this memorial, and
also high reliefs in copper depicting the chief events in the life of
Columbus and a great number of ornaments and other details, all equally
elegant. From the ground to the top of the statue the monument is 180
feet in height. The vaulted arches underneath are used as a
burying-place for distinguished Catalan sailors. A lift runs inside the
column to the top, and a magnificent panoramic view is to be obtained
from the capital. I have referred especially to this column and the
fountain because to my mind they are the most imposing of the many
columns, pyramids, and statues that abound in the squares and
thoroughfares of the city.
[Illustration: THE COLUMBUS COLUMN, BARCELONA.]
Dark, mysterious, and imposing, the Gothic Cathedral is worthy of a
place by the most beautiful of Spain. After the great Cathedral of
Seville, I know no other that impresses one in the same way as the
Cathedral of Barcelona. The fine proportions and carefully-arranged
lighting are common to them both. At Tarragona, Salamanca, Toledo,
Burgos, Leon, and Santiago, we can see work that will bear more close
analysis and confer great teaching; but the Catalan here teaches us his
school of stern, solid, domestic architecture, and he conveys his lesson
by the finest of examples. Here we may learn that little faults on the
part of old workers, and big, glaring faults on the part of their
successors are powerless to detract from the effect of awful solemnity
and majesty of their splendid vistas, to stultify the great ideas and
fine grasp upon the subject of scale with which the Cathedral was
carried out. Beside this, its numerous fine bits of enriched detail work
and its glorious stained glass are mere matters of detail--and the
election of models--and they are scarcely noticed.
[Illustration: PLAZA DEL REY, BARCELONA.]
[Illustration: ARAGON STREET, BARCELONA.]
I have listened to some beautiful music beautifully rendered in the
Cathedral of Barcelona, and in many of the great cathedrals in Spain;
and I have seen an audience go into ecstacies over a piece of
vocalisation in the Opera House at Madrid; but I should hesitate to
describe the Spanish as a musical nation. Singing among the working
people is a habit and a relaxation, but it is scarcely an art. The
working people of Barcelona, or of the Peninsula generally for that
matter, are not naturally musical; but they do not sing the less on that
account. One day as I sat in a friend’s room in the Hotel and listened
to the servants chortling incessantly as they went about their work, I
asked a trifle impatiently: “Do these good people never cease their
singing?” He looked up with a quizzical twinkle in his questioning eyes.
“Singing?” he asked. I held up my finger, and the sound of three
different voices, uplifted in three different ecstacies, came from the
corridor. “Oh! that,” he replied, still smiling: “Yes, they do a good
deal of it. So you call that singing; now I think that is very amiable
of you.” I asked him why their songs were unduly long; and learned that
as each vocalist improvises his or her own song, both words and music,
it is only limited by his or her individual fancy. “But what are the
subjects of their ballads?” I protested, and my friend responded, “Oh!
just anything--a bullfight, a tender tale of love, a report of a police
court case with ten adjournments.” Schubert, it is said, could set a
handbill to music, but these people improvise a romantic opera out of an
overdue laundry account. Their guitar playing has little but mere form;
and their dancing--the dancing of the working-classes who picnic by the
wayside and dance for the sheer love of it and the joy of living--is
governed, or seems to be, by the whim of the performer. When the
children are not playing at bullfights, they are indulging in one or
other of their innumerable singing and dancing games.
Besides the interest it affords in itself, Barcelona is within hail of
Monserrat, the pride of Catalonia, and one of the natural wonders of
Spain, which lies some thirty miles north from the city. Antonio
Gallenga has written of this wonderful mountain: “It is the loftiest and
grandest temple and most formidable citadel that was worked by God’s
hands. The Monastery, standing as it does, squeezed on its narrow ledge,
with an abyss of untold fathoms at its feet, and the weight of three
great rocky masses hanging over its head, must look both mean in size
and tame in taste, crushed by the Titanic grandeur, by the sublime
harmony and the terrible power exhibited by the Supreme Architect in
this His masterpiece of earthly handiwork.”
Nor is the description out of keeping with the subject. Seen from the
road, this terrible yet beautiful mountain, throwing off its morning
mantle of mists and lifting its weird peaks to the sun, presents a
vision of entrancing loveliness. At its base, the Monastery, vast in
size and hideous in its severity, is almost a blot upon the landscape.
But the climb from the Monastery to the summit of Monserrat is fraught
with a succession of overpowering sensations, of perpetual contrast
between terror and delight. The immense mass of mountain, about
twenty-five miles in circumference at its base, is composed of a grey
conglomerate of the granite type, brittle and crumbling; and by its
nature assuming every variety of fanciful and weird appearances,
baffling the utmost extent of men’s inventive powers. For about half the
distance to the top its body remains solid; then rent asunder in every
direction, it towers in thousands of fantastic pinnacles to its highest
point, some four thousand feet above the sea. “There is hardly a spot,”
says Gallenga, “where you do not feel that you stand on a thousand feet
precipice; hardly a nook where some great boulder, as big as the Vatican
Palace, is not suspended over your head, ready, as you fancy, to slide
down in avalanche at every burst of the storm wind.” There are huge,
straight columns, the bases and shafts of which have thus been crumbling
away for thousands of years; while the top, or as one may say, the
capital, still hangs up in air on nothing. Impervious as those crags and
cliffs appear, they are, however, crossed by paths running like threads
on the edge of the precipice.
[Illustration: THE MONASTERY, MONSERRAT.]