Heroic Spain Part 1

Heroic Spain.

by Elizabeth Boyle O'Reilly.

INTRODUCTION

PRACTICAL HINTS

Travel in Spain to-day is attended with little hardship and no danger whatever. Even if one barely knows a word of the language, it is not foolhardy to explore the distant provinces. Commit a few simple sentences to the memory and have courage in using them, for Spanish is p.r.o.nounced just as it is spelled, with a few exceptions soon observed.

The merest beginner is understood.

When a trip into Spain is planned it would be well to send for information about the kilometric ticket to the _Chemins de Fer Espagnols_, 20 Rue Chauchat, Paris. They will mail you, gratis, a pamphlet with a map of the country, where is marked the number of kilometers between the cities; from this it is easy to calculate how large a ticket to buy. The more kilometers taken at one time, the cheaper it is. Thus a ticket of 2,000 k. costs 165 pesetas; one of 5,000 k. costs 385 p., and so on. We got a 10,000 kilometric ticket for two people, first cla.s.s, good for ten months, paying for it 682 pesetas. If the ticket is bought outside of Spain you pay for it in francs, whereas if bought in Spain, you pay in pesetas, which are about fifteen per cent less than francs. Provide yourself with your photograph, and at the first Spanish town--Irun, if you come from Paris, and Port-Bou if from Ma.r.s.eilles--as there is always a pause of some hours on the frontier for the customs, it is a simple matter to buy your _carnet kilometrique_ in the station. It is only on one or two short local lines that these tickets are not accepted. Unfortunately the new rail from Gibraltar up to Bobadilla, by way of which many tourists enter Spain, is one of these disobliging minor lines. In fact many who start their trip from the south have found difficulty in procuring a kilometric ticket till they reached Seville or Granada; this confuses the traveler, and makes him decide the ticket is too complicated for practical use. If he comes to visit merely the southern province of Andalusia, which is what most people see of Spain, with a run up to Madrid for the pictures, then, unless several are traveling as one family, there is little gained by the _carnet_, since a few hundred unused miles are sometimes wasted. But for the complete tour of Spain the kilometric ticket is the most satisfactory arrangement. Besides the reduction it makes in the fare, it saves the confusion of changing money in the stations. You go to the ticket office before boarding a train, have the coupons to be used torn off, and are given a complementary ticket to hand to the conductor on the train. It is well to buy the official railway guide as it saves asking questions, for Spanish trains, though they crawl at a snail's pace, start at the hour announced, and arrive on the minute set down in the time-table.

Thirty kilos, about sixty-six pounds, are allowed free in the luggage van, but for an extensive tour it is better to send trunks ahead by some agency, and travel with only the valises taken with you in the carriage.

These the _mozo_, or porter, carries directly from the train to the hotel omnibus, which--another good custom of the country--is always in waiting, no matter at what hour the arrival. First cla.s.s travel in Spain is about the same as second cla.s.s elsewhere; second cla.s.s is like third cla.s.s in France, except on the express route from Paris to Madrid, and in Catalonia, where second cla.s.s is comfortable.

A hasty sketch of our tour may help later travelers. We entered from the north, by Biarritz, a far better way of seeing the country in its natural sequence than the usual landing at Gibraltar. One feels that the north of Spain, in the truest degree national, untouched by the Moor, has never had justice done it. If a transatlantic liner touched at one of the northern ports, such as Vigo, Santander, Bilbao, it would open up an untrodden Switzerland with fertile valleys and n.o.ble hills. No pleasanter summer tour, on bicycle or afoot, could be made than through the Basque provinces, Asturias, the national cradle of Spain, or in beautiful Galicia with its trout rivers. In summer the climate is cool and pleasant, and the most isolated valleys are so safe that any two women could travel alone with security.

Our first stop was at Loyola in the Basque country; then a week in Burgos; a short stay at Valladolid and Palencia; over the Asturian Mountains to Oviedo; back to Leon City, and from there across other hills to Galicia, seeing Lugo, Coruna, and Santiago in that province; from Coruna to Santiago by diligence, as no rail yet connects the two cities. We returned to Leon province from Galicia, skirting the Mino River which divides Spain and Portugal; stopped a night at Astorga, some days in Salamanca, and made a short pause in Zamora.

Time must not be a consideration in touring these unfrequented cities of middle Spain, for their local trains are few and far between. Only twice a week is there direct communication between Salamanca and Medina del Campo, the junction station on the express route. But if you accept once for all the slowness of the trains, the occasional odd hour of arrival or starting, the inconvenience of a distantly-set station, you cease to fret and scold as do most hurried travelers. We ended by finding the long railway journeys rather restful than otherwise. Usually we had the _Reservado para Senoras_ carriage to ourselves, except on the express line from Paris to Madrid, and we soon learned how to make ourselves comfortable for a whole day's journey, seizing the chance of taking exercise during the long pauses in the stations, and enjoying the human-hearted scenes there witnessed; for a Spaniard greets and bids farewell with the same unconsciousness, the same absence of mauvaise honte as when he prays or makes love.

Also I found the topography of the country of endless interest during the long train trips; to climb up to the great truncated mountain which is central Spain, to see how the still higher ranges of mountains crossed it, how the famous rivers flowed, the setting of the historic cities,--I never tired of looking out on it all. Somehow I have got tucked away a distinct picture of Spain's physical geography, no doubt due to the leisurely railway journeys, which are not so slow that the proportion of the whole is lost, as foot or horse travel would be, nor yet so fast as to jumble the picture, as with the express trips in some countries.

Spain is not beautiful like Italy, nor of the orderly finished type of England or France; she has few of Germany's grand forests. There is no denying she is a gaunt, denuded, tragic land; the desolation of the vast high steppes of Castile is terrible. Only the fringing coasts along the Atlantic and the Mediterranean are fertile. Nevertheless, unbeautiful as is the landscape, it possesses an unaccountable magnificence that grips the mind; we never took a night trip unless forced to it, so strangely interesting were the hours spent in looking from the car window.

After Salamanca we went to Segovia, then across the Guadarramas to the Escorial, and slightly back north by the same mountains to Avila.

Segovia and Avila are true old mediaeval cities of the inmost heart of the race, _Espana la heroica_ incarnate. Again pa.s.sing through the hills, whose cold blue atmosphere Velasquez has made immortally real, we went to Madrid. From there, south, we struck the beaten tourist track with pestering guides and higher prices in the hotels. Up to this we had driven, on arrival in a town, to the first or second hotel mentioned in Baedeker, and the average charge had been seven pesetas a day, all included. The provincial hotels gave a surprisingly good table; excellent soups, fresh fish, the meats fair, and all presented in a savory way; the fact that many men of the town use the hotel as a restaurant has much to do with the generous menu. The rooms were cold and bare, but clean, for not one night of distress did we spend during the eight months' tour. Of course certain modern comforts were completely lacking, but we were grateful enough for clean beds and wholesome food. The taking of money for hospitality is thought degrading by this chivalrous people, so the traveler should not judge them by the innkeeper cla.s.s with whom he comes in contact. I found courtesy as a rule and honesty even in the inns; having valises that could not lock, I yet lost nothing. From Toledo on, we began to go, not to the best hotel mentioned in the guide book, for that now had an average charge of twenty-five francs a day, but we chose some minor inn, such as the Fonda da Lino, in Toledo, once the first hostelry in the city before the "Palace" variety was started for the American tourist.

We had spent October and November in seeing the northern provinces whose piercing cold made us only too glad to settle for the four winter months in Andalusia; a day at Cordova, a fortnight in Granada, a trip to Cadiz, and the bulk of the time in Seville, the best city in Spain for a prolonged stay, though Barcelona also can offer good winter quarters. In April we went north into Estremadura to see the Roman remains, then returned to Madrid for another sight of its unrivaled gallery, and also because all routes focus from the capital like the spokes of a wheel. We continued east to Guadalajara and Siguenza, stopped some days at Saragossa, then descended by Poblet to the warm fertile coast again, to tropical Tarragona and that industrial anomaly in an hidalgo land, Barcelona. After spending some weeks there, in the beginning of June we left Spain by the Port-Bou frontier, stopping at Gerona on the way out.

Thus we had seen some twenty-five Spanish cities--some twenty-five glorious cathedrals!--in a leisurely journey of eight months. Any spot along the southern fringe is suitable for the winter, any spot along the northern coast for the summer, but in high cold middle-Spain travel for pleasure must be limited to early autumn or late spring: we froze to death in Burgos and Salamanca during October, and again shivered and chattered with the April cold of Guadalajara and Siguenza.

As to guide books, Baedeker is as good as any, though the Baedeker for Spain is not equal to that firm's guides for the rest of Europe.

Murray's "Hand-book" is more entertaining, but is rather to be kept as amusing literature than used as a guide book, much of it being the personal opinions and prejudices of Richard Ford, and bristling all over with slurs at Spain's religion. It does not seem reasonable for English-speaking travelers to see this original country through the eyes of a clever but crochety Englishman who wandered over it on horseback eighty years ago: we should not like a European to judge America by d.i.c.kens' notebook dating back to the forties.

There are two bits of advice I would give to those who would thoroughly enjoy traveling in the Peninsula. Pick up as soon as possible something of the tongue or you miss shadings that give depth and strength to the impression. If one knows Latin or French or Italian, it is easy to read Spanish. And I would beg every unhurried traveler to carry in his pocket the "Romancero del Cid," Spain's epic, and "Don Quixote," her great novel, the truest-hearted book ever written. I defy a man to while away a winter in Spain with _el ingenioso hidalgo_ his daily companion, or sit reading the "Cid" above the Tajus gorge at Toledo, and not learn to love this virile, ascetic, realistic, exalted, and pa.s.sionate land, where a peasant is instinctively a gentleman, where a grandee is in practice a democrat, where certain small meanesses, such as sn.o.bbishness, close-fisted love of money, are unknown.

The second advice is to bring to Spain some smattering of architectural knowledge, or half the charm of lingering in her old cities is lost,--also is lessened one's chance to catch unaware the soul of this mystic, profoundly religious race. Here I should end, as I head these lines of introduction with the words: _Practical hints_. And yet, just as it is well nigh impossible in Spain to dissociate the churches themselves from the religious scenes daily witnessed under their Romanesque or Gothic arches, so I cannot help begging the traveler, along with his smattering of architecture to bring a little liberality toward a faith different perhaps from his own, a little openness of mind. To one who goes to Spain in the holier-than-thou att.i.tude, she is dumb and repellent,--she who can be so eloquent!

In each of her cities is a cathedral built when faith was gloriously generous and untamable, and in them one feels, unless blinded by prejudices of early environment or birth, that here indeed man is bowed in the humble self-abas.e.m.e.nt of worship, here is not only aesthetic beauty but a burning soul; the incense, the lights, the inherited lavish wealth speak with the spirituality of symbols, of ritual, that utterance of the soul older than hymns or voiced prayer.

This record of the journey through Spain will be called too partial, and yet I started without the slightest intention of liking or praising her.

A month before going to Spain, on reading in the Bodleian Library certain accounts of St. Teresa, about whom I had but vague ideas, I exclaimed in distress, "What a morbid mind!" I went far from sympathetic, but bit by bit my prejudices dropped away. With the cant and smug self-conceit of northern superiority, I expected among other jars a shock to my religious belief. And after eight months I left Spain with the conviction that magnificently faulty though she is with her bull-fights, a venal government, and city loafers, she can give us lessons in mystic spirituality, in an unpretentious charity, in heroic endurance, in a very practical not theoretic democracy.

ESPAnA LA HEROICA

Deep learned are the poor in many ways, Their hearts are mellowed by sweet human pain, And she has learned the lesson of the waifs, This sadly-ravaged, stern, soul-moving Spain!

Rugged and wild, wind-swept, and bleak, and drear, She has a ruined splendor all her own, It seizes even while you ask in fear The reason man should choose this waste for home.

Her cities rise, ascetic, lofty, proud, Forever haunted by high souls that dare, And from her wondrous churches rings aloud A heaven-storming radiance of prayer;

With psalm, with dance, with ecstasy's white thrill, Her mystics dared to lose themselves in G.o.d, Theirs was unflinching faith, fierce, _varonil_, A force as true to nature as the sod.

Reward must come: perhaps from her to-day May spring the needed saint, to think, to feel, To grope triumphantly, to point the way To altars where both Faith and Science kneel.

Upon her ashy mountain height she stands, Eager to step into the forward strife, Her eyes are wide with hope, outstretched her hands To meet the promise of new coursing life:

Steadfast her cities to the desert face, Snow mountains loom across the silent plain: Take courage, O exalted tragic race!

Courage! Christ's always faithful grand old Spain!

Castile, 1908.

IN THE BASQUE COUNTRY: LOYOLA

"The only happy people in the world are the good man, the sage, and the saint; but the saint is happier than either of the others, so much is man by his nature formed for sanct.i.ty."--JOUBERT.

"Whoever has been in the land of the Basques wishes to return to it; it is a blessed land."--VICTOR HUGO.

The Basque is still one of the st.u.r.dy untouched peoples of the earth; they make still the unmixed aborigines of Spain. Their difficult dialect remains a perplexity to the etymologist, some believe it to be of Tartar origin. They themselves claim to be the oldest race in Europe and that their language came to Spain before the confusion of tongues at Babel.

They derive their name from a Basque phrase meaning "We are enough,"

that fittingly describes their character of self-sufficiency; the mere fact of being born in the province confers n.o.bility. Life for centuries in the isolated valleys that never were conquered by Moor or foreign invader has bred in the Basque a pa.s.sionate independence. He would never join with the neighboring kingdoms of Navarre and Leon until his special privileges were ratified; and though these privileges were the important ones of exemption from taxes and military service, he succeeded in keeping them intact until his sympathies with the Pretenders in the Carlist wars lost him his ancient rights. To-day the Basques must pay taxes and serve in the army like the rest of Spain, but their soldiers are usually employed in the customs, or as aids to the local police. Their red cap, like the French beret, and brilliant red trousers are a familiar sight among the valleys.

Of the three Basque provinces with their 600,000 people, the smallest, Guipuzcoa, is a good epitome of national characteristics. The sinuous valleys now serve as the pa.s.sageway for the rushing mountain river, now spread out into a plain where the villages are set. Each town has its shady _alameda_, its plaza, and a court for playing _pelota_, a kind of tennis, the game of the province. There are frequent _casas solares_,[1]

or family manor houses; one of these I remember wedged in with its neighbors, in Azcoitia, unnoticed by the guide book, only by chance we looked up and found it looming above the narrow pavement; blackened with age and scarred as if crashed with blows of warring times, it was a speaking record of old Basque life. In any other country but Spain, the carelessly rich and unrecorded, such a fortress-house would be a lion in the district,--from this very unexpectedness Spanish travel is of unflagging charm. The strong primitive Guipuzcoans cling to their patriarchal customs. The men and boys sit before their doors making the cord soles used in peasants' shoes; the women in groups of twenty or more, wash clothes in the public trough or down by the river. The industry of all is unflagging. The roads are among the best built in Spain, along them go creaking carts, each wheel made of a solid block of wood bound in iron and emitting a prolonged agonizing squeak. The cream-colored oxen that drag them have their yokes covered with sheepskin, another century-old custom. The carts sometimes carry pigskins filled with wine, three legs in the air, and the unique casks are mended with a kind of pitch that lends a disagreeable flavor to the wine, but these highlanders will not yield an old usage.

No sooner did we cross the _Puente Internacional_ that connects France with its neighbors over the Bida.s.soa River--scene of historic meetings--than we found ourselves in the wooded Basque provinces of the northern Pyrenees. The country was fertile, the small farms cultivated with activity; on the hills were heavily-laden chestnut trees, in the valleys, orchards: we often pa.s.sed trainloads of red apples carried unpacked in the open cars like coal. Not far from the frontier the train skirted what appeared to be an inland lake surrounded by hills, when suddenly I noticed an ocean steamer and some fishing smacks lying at anchor, and looking closer I saw that a narrow pa.s.sage led through the hills to the ocean breaking outside,--another of Spain's unheralded effects. This was the beautiful inland Bay of Pasajes, the port from which young Lafayette sailed for America.

At San Sebastian, the most fashionable summer resort in Spain, and still gay with Madrid people, for the season holds till October, we saw the first bull-ring, a circular building of red and yellow brick in the Moorish style. To find a _plaza de toros_ here in the north was disconcerting. Spain's national game has withstood the will of kings, Papal bulls, the dislike of a large proportion of the Spanish people who pet.i.tioned the Cortes in 1878 for its abolishment, and the odium of foreign races. Until this debased _cosa de Espana_ is done away with it will remain a stumbling block to even the most sympathetic of travelers.

At Irun, the frontier town behind us, we had taken our tickets for Zumarraga, two hours away. There we were to leave the railway and drive into the valleys to Loyola, where in an old castle the hidalgo vizcaino, Don Inigo de Loyola, was born. Our guide book gave but the slightest information. It was raining drearily. With trepidation and sinking hearts we looked out at Zumarraga as the train drew near. Would this, the first night in Spain, cold and wet, be spent in some miserable tavern in a town of a thousand inhabitants, and perhaps the next morning would a rickety diligence take us up the valley? We stepped from the train reluctantly; at the last minute we were tempted to turn back. But a porter had seized our valises, and muttering something incomprehensible about Loyola and an automobile hurried us through the station. And there, beyond, stood the wonderful thing, sign manual of modern comfort--a great red automobile with a gallant chauffeur! We sat down on our luggage and burst into a hearty laugh. It began to dawn on us that perhaps the tour of Spain was not going to be the series of hardships and privations we antic.i.p.ated.

For the sum of three pesetas each (fifty-four cents) we were whirled up the winding valley. The mountains rose precipitously from the road and its accompanying river, reminding me of the valley in the Pistoiese Apennines that leads down to the Bagni di Lucca. In the motor diligence with us were a few courteous Basques; an elderly architect, with the finely-chiseled features of the country, pointed out a sight here and there, among others the birthplace and statue of Legazpi, conqueror of the Philippines. I think he took us for countrywomen of his young queen, and, trying to emulate his politeness, we were silent as to our nationality; later we discovered that this was quite unnecessary, for there is not the slightest prejudice in Spain against the United States.

We pa.s.sed a building by the river and were told it was an electric power-house; almost every part of the country is now lighted by electricity. "You are very up-to-date!" we exclaimed. He replied by a shrug of delighted self-depreciation, a proud smile of conscious superiority aping the humble, not out of place in a Basque whose mysterious language Adam spoke, so ancient and difficult a tongue that the devil who once tried to learn it, they say, had to give up in despair. Our opposite neighbors in the diligence, countrymen whose loss of teeth made them appear aged, sought also to show some courtesy. Each wayside shrine was named with glistening eyes,--St. Anthony; the hermitage on the hill above, St. Augustine; here, St. John. One began to understand religion was no mere Sunday morning service with this people.

After six miles the valley opened out and we came to Azcoitia, a town of some five thousand inhabitants where is manufactured the _boina_, the typical cap of the province. The automobile went slowly through the narrow cobbled streets, under the high houses and the cliff-like church, then sped over two miles of a beautiful valley, with mountain rising behind mountain in the evening light, and at length we reached Loyola.

Here one of the great discoverers of new strength, of untried powers in the human soul, one of the holiest men of Christendom, saw the light in 1491, the year before the discovery of America: in the life of St.