Spanish Life in Town and Country

L.Street Higgin, L. Higgin, Eugène E. (Eugène Edward) Street

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• Publié par: kirim
• Publié le: 08 décembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 18
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

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The Project Gutenberg EBook of Spanish Life in Town and Country, by L. Higgin and Eugène E. Street This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: Spanish Life in Town and Country Author: L. Higgin and Eugène E. Street Editor: William Harbutt Dawson Release Date: March 26, 2006 [EBook #18053] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SPANISH LIFE IN TOWN AND COUNTRY *** Produced by Riikka Talonpoika, Pilar Somoza and The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net Transcriber's note: Spelling mistakes have been left in the text to match the original, except for obvious typos, marked like this. OUR EUROPEAN NEIGHBOURS EDITED BY WILLIAM HARBUTT DAWSON SPANISH LIFE IN TOWN AND COUNTRY "IN CHURCH." SHOWING THE MANTILLA AND VELO SPANISH LIFE IN TOWN AND COUNTRY BY L. HIGGIN WITH CHAPTERS ON PORTUGUESE LIFE IN TOWN AND COUNTRY, BY EUGÈNE E. STREET ILLUSTRATED G.P. PUTNAM'S SONS NEW YORK AND LONDON The Knickerbocker Press 1904 COPYRIGHT, 1902 by G.P. PUTNAM'S SONS Published, May, 1902 Reprinted, February, 1903 May, 1904; September, 1904 The Knickerbocker Press, New York NOTE BY THE EDITOR It has been thought well to include Portugal in this volume, so as to embrace the entire Iberian Peninsula. Though geographically contiguous, and so closely associated in the popular mind, the Spanish and Portuguese nations offer in fact the most striking divergences alike in character and institutions, and separate treatment was essential in justice to each country. The preferential attention given to Spain is only in keeping with the more prominent part she has played, and may yet play, in the history of civilisation. {v} I am indebted for the chapters on Portugal to Mr. Eugène E. Street, whose long and intimate acquaintance with the land and its people renders him peculiarly fitted to draw their picture. L. HIGGIN. {vii} CONTENTS SPANISH LIFE PAGE CHAPTER I LAND AND PEOPLE CHAPTER II TYPES AND TRAITS CHAPTER III NATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS CHAPTER IV SPANISH SOCIETY CHAPTER V MODERN MADRID CHAPTER VI THE COURT CHAPTER VII POPULAR AMUSEMENTS CHAPTER VIII THE PRESS AND ITS LEADERS CHAPTER IX 129 111 97 77 55 38 24 1 POLITICAL GOVERNMENT CHAPTER X COMMERCE AND AGRICULTURE CHAPTER XI THE ARMY AND NAVY CHAPTER XII RELIGIOUS LIFE CHAPTER XIII EDUCATION AND THE PRIESTHOOD CHAPTER XIV PHILANTHROPY—POSITION OF WOMEN—MARRIAGE CUSTOMS CHAPTER XV MUSIC, ART, AND THE DRAMA CHAPTER XVI MODERN LITERATURE CHAPTER XVII THE FUTURE OF SPAIN PORTUGUESE LIFE CHAPTER XVIII LAND AND PEOPLE CHAPTER XIX PORTUGUESE INSTITUTIONS INDEX 142 {viii} 156 183 198 213 226 236 246 260 277 298 315 {ix} ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE "IN CHURCH." SHOWING THE MANTILLA AND VELO PEASANTS A CORNER IN OLD MADRID SEVILLE CIGARRERA PEASANTS VALENCIANOS THE WATER TRIBUNAL IN VALENCIA. SHOWING VALENCIAN COSTUMES PAST WORK KNIFE-GRINDER Frontispiece 2 8 20 20 26 34 50 50 OUTSIDE THE PLAZA DE TOROS, MADRID BUEYES RESTING IN THE WOODS AT LA GRANJA PLAZA DE TOROS. PICADOR CAUGHT BY THE BULL PLAZA DE TOROS. THE PROCESSION DRAGGING OUT THE DEAD BULL THE ESCURIAL A WEDDING PARTY IN ESTREMADURA A COUNTRY CABIN IN GALICIA 78 94 104 120 124 126 140 170 292 {x} {1} SPANISH LIFE IN TOWN AND COUNTRY CHAPTER I LAND AND PEOPLE in comparatively late years has the Iberian Continent hunting-grounds of O America. To British andwonderful legendsand somewhat ofbeen added to the happyoutbreakare the war the ordinary American tourist, a check arose after the of with the other which gather round this romantic country, and spread NLY abroad, unabashed and uncontradicted, was added one more, to the effect that so strong a feeling existed on the part of the populace against Americans, that it was unsafe for English-speaking visitors to travel there. Nothing is farther from the truth; there is no hatred of American or English, and, if there had been, they little know the innate courtesy of the Spanish people, who fear insult that is not due to the overbearing manners of the tourist himself. To-day, however, everyone is going to Spain, and as the number of travellers increases, so, perhaps, does the real ignorance of the country and of her people become more apparent, for, after a few days, or at most weeks, spent there, those who seem to imagine that they have discovered Spain, as Columbus discovered America, deliver their judgment upon her with all the audacity of ignorance, or, at best, with very imperfect information and capacity for forming an opinion. For many years, the foreign element in Spain was so small that all who made their home in the country were known and easily counted, while those who travelled were, for the most part, cultivated people—artists, {2} or lovers of art, or persons interested in some way in the commercial or industrial progress of the nation. Even in those days, however, too many tourists spent their time amongst the dead cities, remnants of Spain's great past, and came back to add their quota to the sentimental notions current about the romantic land sung by Byron. Wrapped in a glamour for which their own enthusiasm was mainly responsible, they beheld all things coloured with the rich glow of a resplendent sunset; their descriptions of people and places raised expectations too often cruelly dispelled by facts, as presented to those of less exuberant imaginations. PEASANTS PEASANTS {3} On the other hand, the mere British traveller, knowing nothing of art, almost nothing of history, and very little of anything beyond his own provincial parish, finds all that is not the commonplace of his own country, barbarous and utterly beneath contempt. His own manners, not generally of the best, set all that is proud and dignified in the lowest Spaniard in revolt; he imagines that he meets with discourtesy where, in fact, he has gone out to seek it, and his own ignorance is chiefly to blame for his failure to understand a people wholly unlike his own class associates at home. He, too, returns, shaking the dust off his feet, to draw a picture of the land he has left, as false and misleading as that of the dreamer who has overloaded his picture with colour that does not exist for the ordinary tourist. Thus it too often comes to pass that visitors to Spain experience keen disappointment during their short stay in the country. Whether they always acknowledge it or not, is another question. To hit the happy medium, and to draw from a tour in Spain, or from a more prolonged sojourn there, all the pleasure that may be derived from it, and to feel with those who, knowing the country and its people intimately, love it dearly, a remembrance of its past history and of its strange agglomeration of nationalities is absolutely necessary; nor can any true idea be formed of the country from a mere acquaintance with any one of its widely differing provinces. Galicia is, even to-day, more nearly allied to Portugal than to Spain, and it was only in 1668 that the independence of the former was acknowledged, and it became a separate kingdom. With all rights now equalised, the inhabitants of the remaining provinces of Spain differ as widely from one another as they do from the sister kingdom, while the folklore of Asturias and of the Basque Provinces is very closely allied with that of Portugal. To judge the Biscayan by the same standard as the Andaluz, is as sensible as it would be to compare the Irish squatter with Cornish fisher-folk, or the peasants of Wilts and Surrey with the Celtic races of the West Highlands of Scotland, or even with the people of Lancashire or Yorkshire. Nor is it possible to speak of Spain as a whole, and of what she is likely to make of the present impulse towards national growth and industrial prosperity, without remembering that her population counts, among its rapidly increasing numbers, the far-seeing and business-like, if somewhat selfish, Catalan, with a language of his own; the dreamy, pleasure-loving Andaluz; the vigorous Basque, whose distinctive language is not to be learned or understood by the people of any other part of Spain; the half-Moorish Valencian and the selfrespecting Aragonese, who have always made their mark in the history of their country, and were looked upon as a foreign element in the days when their kingdom and that of Leon were united, under one crown, with Castile. It was only after Alfonso XII. had stamped out the last Carlist war that the ancient fueros, or special rights, of the Basque Provinces became a thing of the past, and their people liable to conscription, on a par with all the other parts of Spain. Every student of history knows that the era of Spain's greatness was that of Los Reyes Católicos, Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon, when the wonderful discovery and opening up of a new world made her people dizzy with excitement, and seemed to promise steadily increasing power and influence. Everyone knows that these dreams were never realised; that, so far from remaining the greatest nation of the Western World, Spain has gradually sunk back into a condition that leaves her to-day outside of international politics; and that, with the loss of her last colonies overseas, she appears to the superficial observer to be a {4} {5} dead or dying nation, no longer of any account among the peoples of Europe. But this is no fact; it is rather the baseless fancy of incompetent observers, to some extent acquiesced in, or at least not contradicted, by the proud Castilian, who cares not at all about the opinions of other nationalities, and who never takes the trouble to enlighten ignorance of the kind. True, there was an exhibition of something like popular indignation when the people fancied they discovered a reference to Spain in the u