Getting to know Spain Part 2

Little girls jump rope, play with jacks and dolls. Or they play singing games which act out the parts of kings and queens and princesses. Little boys are most interested in games with b.a.l.l.s, like jai alai or football.

The favorite game of most little boys in Spain is "Torero." In this game they pretend they are bullfighters, who are called "toreros." Every boy in Spain dreams of growing up to be the greatest bullfighter in the world. Bullfighting is one of the most exciting things in life to every Spaniard.

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Every big city has a great bullring, a round building with many steps of seats and no roof, called the "Plaza de Toros." "Toro" is the bull. The bulls are especially bred for the ring, because no ordinary cow or bull would be able to take part in this colorful pageant. Almost every Sunday afternoon throughout the year, and at holiday times, there is a "corrida" or bullfight, and everybody goes to see the toreros fight the bulls.

Bullfighters in Spain are the same heroes to Spanish boys and girls that baseball players are to American youngsters. This is the reason why you'll see all the little Spanish boys playing Torero. One pretends he is the toro and wears a basket over his head as he charges at the one pretending he is the torero with a red cape and wooden sword.

Although Spanish children like to play, they are also very serious about schoolwork, because they know that if Spain is to be a wise member of the family of nations, she needs educated citizens. During the Civil War it was very hard for young people to get an education, and some of the schools and universities were destroyed by bombs or fires. Now the universities have been rebuilt, and more schools are being built every year.

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Some boys and girls go to schools run by their church, and they are taught by priests and nuns. According to law, everyone must go to school until the age of fourteen. Then, if the family can afford it, they can go on to higher schools and the university. If the family is poor but a boy is very bright, he may win a scholarship by getting high marks.

Because boys are more likely than girls to go to a university, they study more science and mathematics in school than their sisters do. Of course they all study reading, writing, history, arithmetic and good manners.

When a Spanish boy grows up and has a university education, he may become a doctor, lawyer, banker, newspaperman or government worker, just as any of you may. If he is going to be a farmer, a fisherman, or fashion things with his hands as a carpenter or wrought-iron maker does, he probably won't go to school after he is fourteen. If he's going to do the same thing his father does, his father will teach him. Otherwise, he may become an apprentice, which means that he will work right along with grownups who already do what he wants to learn. He learns by doing it with them.

Little Spanish girls, who wear pinafores to school and do their hair in pigtails, are more interested in learning how to be good mothers, because every little Spanish girl dreams of marrying and having lots of children. They learn how to read and write, and the history of their country, but they also learn how to cook and sew and bring up children.

Recently some Spanish girls have started learning how to be lawyers, doctors and teachers. These girls, like their brothers, go on to universities. Some girls also learn shorthand and typing so that they can work in offices. Before the Civil War there were no girls in offices, but today they like being secretaries and typists just as girls in America do. Still, even these modern Spanish girls don't have the freedom to go to parties or on dates with boys, the way American girls do, unless they are engaged to be married. When they go out at night for the paseo or to attend the theater or a movie, they go with other girls or with their whole family.

A strong family bond unites all Spanish people. Fathers and mothers and children spend as much time together as they possibly can. If being together means that children must go with parents into the fields at harvest time, then they go, even if they only play around and don't really help. In the evenings when the father and mother go to the paseo or sit in a cafe to talk with their friends, their children go with them.

Always the whole family goes to church together. One of the most important days in a Spanish child's life is the day of confirmation.

Then the family and relatives and friends from miles around come to celebrate. All over Spain, on a Sunday morning, you'll see the little girls in their long white dresses with white gloves and veils, looking proud and happy as they walk to church with their beaming mothers and fathers for their confirmation. When boys are confirmed, they wear white suits, with a cape lined in scarlet or blue satin and trimmed with gold braid. If the family has enough money, they may hire a horse-drawn carriage. The driver wears a tall black stovepipe silk hat and the carriage doors and horses' bridles are decorated with white flowers.

The church is very important in Spanish life. The Apostle James himself came to preach in Spain, and later, after he had been killed in Palestine, his body was brought back to Spain for burial. His tomb is in the beautiful Cathedral of Santiago--which is the way Spanish people say St. James--in Compostela, in northern Spain. For thousands of years people from all over the world have come as pilgrims to Compostela. Many little Spanish boys are named Santiago, or perhaps Jaime, another way to say James in Spanish, for Santiago is the patron saint of all Spain.

Every city and village also has its very own private patron saint. Once a year there is a village festival or "fiesta" in his or her honor. If you were to travel through Spain you would find a fiesta somewhere every day of the year! These fiestas start in the morning when all the people go to church, which is always decorated with hundreds of flowers and candles. Then in the afternoon or evening there is a long parade from the church through the main streets and back to the church again, with the figure of the saint standing on a flower-draped platform which is carried on the shoulders of young men.

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Choirs sing, candles and incense burn, and all the people stand in reverence along the route. A bullfight is usually a feature of a saint's day too, with the whole town going to the Plaza de Toros to watch. The paseo will be especially gay at fiesta time, and as darkness falls, the guitars will start to tw.a.n.g, castanets will click and all the young people will gather in the main square to take part in folk dances until morning. Sometimes the saint's fiesta will last a whole week, with bullfights every afternoon and a fair every night.

One of the most unusual fiestas in all Spain is held every March in Valencia in honor of St. Joseph. It is called the "Fallas de San Jose"

because of the huge, grotesque figures called "fallas" which are the main feature of the celebration. Every club and religious group in the city spends weeks in advance of St. Joseph's Day building these figures out of papier-mache, and each group tries to keep its design secret until the fiesta takes place. The best falla wins a prize, and at the end of the three-day celebration, all the fallas except the prize-winner are burned in a big bonfire while the people dance around it and fireworks are shot into the sky.

Of all holidays, Christmas is one of the merriest in Spanish homes.

"Noche Buena," or Christmas Eve, is a time for families to sit down to a wonderful feast. The mothers and older sisters of the family have been preparing this feast for months, and fathers have been collecting the best Spanish wines to store away until now. Turkey is the traditional dish at Spanish Christmas dinners just as it is here. But Christmas is one of the few times turkey is ever served in most Spanish homes, so it is really a special treat.

Spicy hams, stuffed roast lamb, and special fish dishes are also served with the roast turkey. And no Christmas table would be complete without "turrones"--a candy made of honey and almonds, something like our nougats. Dried figs and grapes, walnuts and hazelnuts load the table even more. After dinner, the family goes to midnight services at church called "Misa de Gallo"; then they come home and celebrate until morning.

There are no Christmas trees in Spain, but each family makes its own Nativity scene, which is set out in time for Christmas Eve. In some cities contests are held for the most beautiful "Belen" scenes, as they are called, because "Belen" is the way Spanish people say Bethlehem. On Christmas Day everybody goes calling to see the Belens in other people's houses.

Sometimes grownups exchange gifts on Christmas Day, but Spanish children don't receive their gifts until January 6, Three King's Day. Instead of Santa Claus, the Three Wise Men, Melchior, Gaspar and Balthasar leave gifts in the children's shoes. The shoes are set out in a window or near the fireplace, filled with hay so the camels of the Three Kings may feast. In the morning the hay is gone and toys, nuts, fruit and candy have taken its place.

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Holy Week, the week starting with Palm Sunday and ending with Easter, is another important time in Spanish life. On Palm Sunday, everyone throughout the country has palm branches from Elche, an old town where the only palm grove in Europe grows. After carrying the branches in processions through the streets and into the churches and cathedrals, people hang them on the balconies of their houses, where they remain until the fresh palm branches of the next year replace them.

The most colorful celebration of Holy Week is held in Seville, a city in sunny Andalusia. Every night there are processions of robed and hooded men moving silently through streets lined with thousands of men, women and children. All the figures of saints and Madonnas from all the churches and the Cathedral are carried in one procession or another. The figures are dressed in costly vestments and jewels, and the procession is lighted by flickering torches and candles. As the figures pa.s.s beneath balconies crowded with watchers, a singer will suddenly break into a spontaneous, unaccompanied song, called a "saeta," to salute the saint being carried by. The saeta is the same sort of song the Moors used to sing when they lived in Seville and other cities in Andalusia, and today it is usually sung by gypsies, thousands of whom live here.

Night after night these processions go on, until Good Friday, when the most gorgeous one of all starts at 3 o'clock in the morning. This is the procession of the Virgin of Macarena, the patron saint of bullfighters and all Seville. The Virgin is dressed up in robes of silver and gold and wears jewels given by famous bullfighters and wealthy people. The men who march in this procession wear costumes of rich red and gold, and there is an honor guard dressed like ancient Roman centurions. The "Macarena" is the most popular saint in Seville, and everyone watches her procession until it takes her back to her shrine in the gypsy section, Triana, followed by thousands of gaily clad gypsies who spend the rest of the night singing and dancing to the throbbing of guitars.

Shortly after Holy Week, Seville has another gay festival, this time called a "feria," which is rather like a big country fair. For two weeks everybody celebrates all day and all night, singing and dancing and visiting friends for a gla.s.s of wine. Every day there is a bullfight, and at night there are concerts, dance and art shows, and plays. The huge fair grounds blaze with light, and ferris wheels and merry-go-rounds spin gaily round and round.

Once upon a time, the feria was an auction for horses and cattle, and today it is still a time when the best hors.e.m.e.n show off their fine horses and their skill at riding. During the feria, the proud hors.e.m.e.n wear leather ap.r.o.ns something like our cowboys' chaps over their tight gray riding pants. Their bolero jackets are black trimmed with braid, and their hats are black too, the flat, wide-brimmed felt hats which hors.e.m.e.n always wear in Spain.

Horses are curried until they shine, and flowers and ribbons are twined in their manes and tails and decorate their bridles. Beautiful black-haired girls dress up like gypsies, something they would not be allowed to do at any other time. As the girls ride in the saddles behind their young men, the long, flounced, polka-dotted skirts of red, green or blue fall down over the horse's side. Black lace mantillas are draped over very tall combs in their hair, and a gay flower is usually pinned behind one ear. Every carriage, every farm cart, every house and every person is decorated with flowers.

At harvest time, when olives, grapes, fruit or grain are brought in from the land, there is much merry-making, too. At Jerez de la Frontera, a sunny town in Andalusia where everybody works at growing grapes and making them into a famous wine called sherry, the harvest festival comes just before the grapes are ready to be harvested, in September.

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High-wheeled vineyard carts decorated with vines and flowers are pulled, by st.u.r.dy oxen, out of every vineyard in the countryside, carrying all the pretty girls who work there and a basket of new grapes. The carts wind through the streets to the Cathedral, where the grapes are blessed and all the people pray and give thanks for a good harvest. Then, in the square in front of the Cathedral, a great flock of pigeons is loosed into the air. These are homing pigeons, and they fly back to their homes in every part of Spain, carrying the message that the harvest is about to begin. There's dancing in the streets all night, and the next day there are bullfights, races and more dancing. Then the people all go to work to harvest the grapes.

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On Spanish holidays, there is plenty to eat and drink. For visitors, eating is fun even on any ordinary day. If you were to travel from region to region in Spain, you would notice that people eat different foods in different places. Along the seacoasts, of course, they eat many kinds of fish. In the north, one of the favorite seafood dishes is made of codfish cooked in a delicious sauce of red and green peppers flavored with garlic. In Valencia you would eat "paella" made of many kinds of sh.e.l.lfish, chicken, ham and rice flavored with saffron, a yellow spice which grows in Spain. Paella is made in a big round iron pan over a charcoal fire, and the little clams, shrimps, pieces of chicken and everything else that makes it good are tossed in, a handful at a time, until the whole dish is ready to be served, right from the pan it was cooked in.

Most families have a big lunch, at about 2 o'clock. If the weather is cool, this is very likely to be a pot of stew, or "cocido." Depending on what part of the country you are in, this cocido might be made of fish, lamb, beef or chicken. Whatever the meat or fish may be, the cocido also includes all the vegetables that grow in the garden at that time of year. It's apt to be flavored with garlic, sweet Spanish red peppers, and perhaps several spoonfuls of sherry wine.

In the hot summer weather in Andalusia, people eat a delicious cold soup as their main dish at lunch, and sometimes at dinner too. This soup is called _gazpacho_, and it is made with Spanish olive oil, vinegar, tomato juice and ice water. Very fine bread crumbs help make it thick, and little pieces of fresh, cold tomatoes, cuc.u.mbers, green peppers, olives and onions float on top.

Everybody in Spain eats a great many "churros." Churros are something like doughnuts, but they are twisted into odd shapes and fried in olive oil until they are crisp all the way through, not just on the outside.

They are very fine for breakfast with hot chocolate, and they are also good with sugar sprinkled on them as a between-meals snack. Another snack is almonds, grown right in Spain, and shrimp the size of your little finger.

Some of the foods the Spanish children eat are the same ones their great-great-great-grandfathers and mothers ate, too. Mostly, the houses where they live are also very old--as old as the holiday customs that haven't changed in hundreds of years. These old ways and scenes are some of the reasons Spain has been called "the land where time stands still."

Only just now is this old Spain about to become modern Spain. New roads, railroads and airfields are being built to help people get around the country faster and to send food from farms and seacoasts to markets in a hurry. All over Spain you hear the sound of hammers and chisels, busily building a new life for the people.

Spain has joined the United Nations and Spanish boys and girls are eager to join all boys and girls who want their countries to be partners in progress. If, in getting to know Spain, you have learned to like it, perhaps you'll want to say "h.e.l.lo" and "good luck" to your Spanish friends. Here is how to say it: "Saludos, amigos!"

History

Before 200 B.C.--Earliest people lived in caves in northern Spain; were conquered by Iberians, then Celts. Phoenicians and Greeks came, and finally all were conquered by Carthaginians.

201 B.C.--Romans conquered Carthaginians, began a rule lasting more than 500 years.

406 A.D.--Barbarians, especially Visigoths, came into Spain from central Europe and eventually drove out the Romans.

711 A.D.--The Moors came from North Africa and conquered all Spain in less than 10 years. Although the Christian Spaniards started fighting almost immediately for the "Reconquest" of Spain, the Moors were masters for almost 800 years.

January 2, 1492--The Reconquest of Spain was completed when the armies of Ferdinand and Isabella drove the Moors out of the Alhambra in Granada, their last stronghold.