Things Seen in Spain — Chapter 5, Country Life in Spain, Part 1

Life in a Spanish _Posada_—Spanish Peasants—The Toilers of the Field and other Workers—The _Cigarreras_ of Seville—The _Kermesse_ in the Esclava Gardens—The Love of Festivals—Easter Day in a Spanish Village—Third-class Travelling—Wild Life in Spain—Fishing in the Country Districts.

To know Spain it is not enough to visit the towns.

It is when the stranger leaves the beaten tracks of travel, and goes to the country districts, where the outcome of modern progress is still unknown, that he sees the life of ancient Spain almost unchanged.

I know of no experience more necessary to the understanding of the country and its people than a lengthened stay in a village _posada_.

The life, indeed, will be hard in many ways, and it will be wise for the stranger to cultivate the stoicism and indifference to personal comfort that characterize the Spaniards themselves; but the experience is excellent, and the people you meet are charming in their kindness and perfect courtesy.

The _posada_ is the _casa huéspedes_, or house of hospitality for the neighbourhood.

The title is no misnomer, but stands for what the village _posada_ truly is.

To stay there is to find a new meaning in the word “hospitality”; it is to know willing service, restrained by the fine Spanish courtesy from offensive attention.

[Picture: A bridge and country homes in the mountains of Northern Spain] It is more than probable that the first sight of the _posada_ may disturb the stranger.

It is built with a spacious vestibule.

On one side of the stone staircase, which gives entrance to the upstairs living-rooms, is a dark wineshop, where the men of the village foregather to talk and drink the black native wine; while the other side serves as the stable, in which the mules, donkeys, oxen, and other animals belonging to the house, have their home.

Many odours cling about the dark staircase; the scent of closely packed animals mingles with that of garlic, while the air reeks with the fumes of rancid _aceite_, or oil—the never-to-be-forgotten smell that belongs to every _posada_.

The noise in the vestibule is deafening and incessant; the men talk in loud voices which are piercingly vibrant and metallic.

Cackling hens, with maybe a fat black pig or little woolly lamb, block the way as one climbs the staircase to the living-room.

This room is bare, but never dirty; the filth which I had been led to expect from my experience of some of the smaller inns in the towns does not exist in the village _posadas_.

The large windows open on to wooden balconies which look out on to the tree-shaded _plaza_.

The walls are freshly whitewashed, and the bare boards of the floor are scrubbed to snowy whiteness by their daily scouring with sand; the curtains, too, when there are any, are always white.

Sometimes a few highly coloured and amazing religious prints in black frames hang upon the walls, but, fortunately, more often they are bare.

The furniture is of the simplest description—a large table, bare of any cloth, that fills most of the room, wooden chairs and a Spanish press, a great cupboard which holds the linen of the family.

The beds are placed in small alcoves which lead out of the living-rooms; and these beds are always comfortable, with spotless linen, embroidered, lace-trimmed, and brought from the lavender-scented chest.

There is no fireplace in the living-room, and if, as often chances in winter and early spring, the weather is cold, the only heat is gained from the _brasero_, whose charcoal ashes give the very faintest glow of warmth.

The Spaniards accept cold without murmur; they wrap themselves in their cloaks, and wait till God sends out the sun.

[Picture: The Village Posada at Matarosa] The _posada_ is ruled by the señora.

She sways a rod of iron over her husband, relatives, servants, guests, and the arrangements of the house, being full of energy and the vigour of character that is common to Spanish women even in old age.

She is the characteristic type of the Spanish woman of the people, her face a formidable mass of wrinkles;

_jamona_, or stout in body, but of surprising agility; she is witty, smiling, and contented.

From break of day until late evening she bustles about, shouting orders as she goes from one task to another, yet she seems never hurried, never overburdened.

How happy she is if her efforts are appreciated and her guests enjoy the fare she has provided!

how her face saddens and clouds if any dish is sent from the table uneaten.

“Mas, mas!

” (More, more!

), is her constant cry as she enters the room at the beginning of every course to urge her guests to eat.

To have English visitors staying at her posada filled the good señora with pride.

Her satisfaction reached its zenith when letters arrived from England.

She was loath to yield them up.

“The great English people will know of my _posada_ now,” she said on one occasion, pointing to the address in triumph.

With comical humility she asked that, in my goodness, I would give her the envelope.

How well do I remember the joy with which she carried away the torn trophy!

Nothing was too good for these strangers who had come from a foreign land to stay at her _posada_.

The best of everything the house contained was given up for our use, special food was cooked, and the village was ransacked to provide things fitting for _los Ingléses_.

On one occasion, when I had asked for a certain food not to be obtained in the neighbourhood, a messenger was sent on horseback twenty miles over the mountains to the nearest town to procure it.

Nor was any payment allowed for the service.

No, the English señora was her guest; she had asked for something, it was her duty to provide it.

The trouble!

the expense!

she did not understand.

In the old Spain service is not rendered for payment.

It is in the villages that one is best able to study the peasants and the gipsies.

Sunday is the _dia festivo_, when the youths and maidens, dressed in the picturesque native costumes, dance and sing to the music of the village piper, who plays the _dulzaina_, a kind of clarionet.

He marks the time by beating on a drum which is slung around his waist.

The singing is the tuneless chanting heard so often in Spain, a kind of interminable dwelling on one piercing note, not beautiful to unaccustomed ears, but disturbing in its strange appeal, which so persistently recalls the East.

The dances are danced by boys and girls and men and women grouped in couples of four or six.

There is a great deal of movement;

the hands keep time with the feet, playing castanets hung with bright-coloured ribbons.

In all parts of Spain there are gipsies, but it is in the districts of the south that the stranger will see them best, for there would seem to be a special affinity between the Andalusian and the gipsy character.

The Gitanas and Gitanos live in communities, often in houses carved out of the mountain sides.

It is among them that we find the most typical of the Spanish dancers.

Dancing is a universal accomplishment, a part of life, in which every girl and boy takes his or her share.

[Picture: A mediæval ox-cart, Province of Guipúzcoa] On one day in the week the market is held in every small town, on the open ground of the _plaza_, under the overspreading trees.

Let us look at the market-place at Ampuero, a large village in the Basque province of Guipúzcoa.

The whole ground space is filled with booths that are piled up with fruit and vegetables, with dress-stuffs, pots, water-jugs, furniture, and a medley of wares that give bright colour to the scene.

Peasants from the surrounding hamlets have all come to buy and sell.

They are dressed in the native costume—the men with the _boina_, or cap of dark blue wool, shaped like a Scotch tam-o’-shanter, short smock jackets, trousers of bright blue linen, and red or black body sashes; and the women with their many-coloured handkerchiefs of silk, bright skirts that are short and very wide, and still brighter blouses.

The Spanish peasants have the delight in vivid colour that belongs to all primitive and happy people.

The sellers and buyers stand about in groups talking in the ancient and mysterious Basque language, which once, as place-names prove, was spoken over the greater part of the Peninsula.

All business is carried out in the vivid, primitive Spanish manner.

And what impresses the stranger most is the courtesy and happy good-nature, which makes the universal bargaining a game enjoyed alike by buyer and seller.

In one corner of the _plaza_, under an archway, is a stone image, beneath which burns a sacred lamp, and always, as they pass, the men and women pause, cross themselves, and make a genuflection; religion is part of business.

The mules and ox-carts stand at the outskirts of the plaza.

The mules are shaved on the upper part of their bodies and their tails and ears, and have a curious appearance; they are thin and badly cared for, but this is hidden by their gay trappings.

The ox-waggons are exceedingly primitive, and as each one arrives a hoarse and deafening noise pierces the air.

The peasants leave the wheels of the cart unoiled, and delight in the frightful music, which can be heard half a league away; they believe that the sound drives off demons.

A peasant would not own a cart that did not “play.

” The Basques claim to be the oldest race in Europe; and it is now generally acknowledged that they represent the primitive Iberians of Berber stock, who form the fundamental population of all Spain.

Many primitive customs survive among them, and one of the most interesting is that by which the eldest daughter in some districts takes precedence over the sons in inheritance.

They are a people of the mountains, and to know the Basques you must live in their villages; even their one town, Bilbao, in spite of its industrial and commercial prosperity, is really an overgrown village more than a city.

It offers a striking contrast to Barcelona, the other great Spanish seaport, and the most perfect example of a commercial city.

[Picture: Harvesting wheat in the Basque Province of Guipúzcoa] To see the Basques at their finest you must watch them in the fields, where the women work side by side with the men, and appear to have equal strength with them.

They use a large and primitively-shaped fork on which both feet are placed to force the implement into the ground, and the work is carried out with surprising rapidity.

Great flocks of sheep are reared in Spain, especially in Estremadura;

each flock belonging to one proprietor is called a _cabaña_, and many contain 50,000 sheep.

The shepherd who guards the _cabaña_ is one of the most constant figures in the country districts.

A million arrobes of wool—an arrobe is about 25 pounds—are said to be obtained in each year, and the wool is famed throughout Europe.

Although manufactures are not extensively developed, I have seen cloth made at Guadalajara that for beauty of colour and quality would compare favourably with the manufactures of England or France.

It is worth noting that in some manufactories it is the custom to set aside a portion of the wool to be sold for the benefit of souls in purgatory—an instance of how in Spain religion is connected with everything.

The most important industries of Spain are wine-making and fruit-growing.

The country makes all the common wines for her own consumption, and the brandies, rich wines, and fruits exported form a considerable source of wealth.

Many thousands of men, women, and children, are employed in these industries.

At Seville and other towns in the south, the women pick the oranges ready to be taken to the ships.

Great heaps of golden fruit line the groves, which are afterwards sorted, the better fruit being wrapped in paper before it is packed.

One of the oldest industries is pottery.

The _jarro_, or earthen pots used for water, are made of white or red clay, unglazed, and very beautiful in shape.

The _jarro_ are sold by women in the markets of the towns for a few reales—that is to say, about five or six English pence.

[Picture: An orange-picker, Seville] Spanish workers are universally poor, receiving wages so low that it is surprising how they live.

But they are thrifty and sober, while their needs are simple, and their hardships are mitigated in some measure by the fact that almost all industries are carried on out of doors.

In the streets of the towns you see men and women at work at the edge of pavements, making and mending boots, working sewing-machines, preparing leather goods, ironware, and other commodities.

The shops and small manufactories are open to the street; you can see the occupants within making ropes and baskets, saddlebags, brushes, and a variety of wares.

What impressed me was that these workers always looked happy.

Women play an important part in the life of workaday Spain, and the splendid types of these women workers make the foreigner think deeply.

They are full of energy and vigour even in old age.

They work as well as the men in the fields, turning the soil with forks, training the vines, and garnering the grapes and chestnuts.

I have seen women carrying immense burdens, unloading boats, acting as porters, removing household furniture.

I saw one woman with a chest of drawers easily poised upon her head; another, who was quite old, carried a bedstead.

A beautiful woman porter in one village carried our heavy luggage, running with it on bare feet, without sign of effort.

For what surprised me most was that, in spite of hard physical labour, these women are beautiful.

They are always happy and contented; in their faces, and especially in their eyes, is that indescribable expression, the wonderful smile of Spanish women.

A visit to the _fábrica de tabacos_ at Seville will show the stranger a charming scene of labour.

The rooms of the factory are large, and, although low, are airy.

They open into outer courts, and the great chambers, supported by pillars, resemble a church.

Each room has its altar, which is decorated with flowers and offerings.

As the workers pass they cross themselves, and never fail to make the customary genuflection.

Yet, with the easy familiarity which is the special feature of the Spaniard’s religion, they will often place their outer garments upon the altar.

The _cigarreras_ are deeply religious, and at a recent Easter festival one of the _pasos_ of the Virgin was presented with a splendid new mantle at a cost of 9,000 dollars, for the purchase of which the 7,000 workers had each contributed two _centimos_ a week during the preceding year.

The _cigarreras_, in brightly coloured costumes, sit at work making _polvo de Sevilla_ and _tabaco de fraile_.

A skilful worker can easily accomplish ten _atados_, or bundles of fifty cigars, daily.

The murmur of conversation never ceases; talking seems to aid the Spaniards in work.

Many of the women have their babies with them, whom they tend in the intervals of work; children a little older play happily together in groups.

It is enough to have seen these smiling, contented, industrious women to know that life is happy to most women in Spain.

The _Kermesse_, which is held each year in the Esclava Gardens, is the festival of the _cigarreras_; it is a kind of fair.

The stalls and booths, where every variety of wares are sold, are presided over by the _cigarreras_, dressed in the beautiful Andalusian attire.

They chaffer over every sale, but they do not seek customers, and appear to be more occupied in talking than in selling their goods.

All day long the gardens are full of gay noise.

The women pass to and fro; some sit on seats, some rest upon the grass under the trees.

In the centre of the gardens a platform is erected, where in turn the women dance the _sevillanas_ and other dances with charming spontaneous enjoyment.

The sound of castanets and clapping of hands never ceases; the talking is deafening.

Sometimes there is a quarrel, but this is rare.

There is a natural refinement in these women, and because they are really happy they have no need of riot to convince themselves that life is pleasant.