Home life in Spain

Preface

MY acquaintance with Spain dates back nearly twenty years. Since the first trip to Andalusia, taken on a tramp steamer that still fills a leading role when I suffer from nightmare, I have revisited the south half a dozen times and lived awhile in centre, north, and east. On several occasions holiday-making has provided the sole excuse for a visit, but I have acted as special correspondent to two daily papers, and this work gave me my first insight into the working of Spain's political machine. Of the fascination of the country and the charm of the people there is little set down in the following pages, not that it is possible to forget either, but because many pens have made the recital more tedious than a twice told tale. In the preparation of this volume I have relied for the most part upon memory and Charles Rudy. He it is who has set me right when memory tired or sought to play me false ; in his pleasant company I still recall incidents of half-forgotten days and nights spent in the most fascinating country in Europe. He it is who came to my rescue when I sought in vain to do justice to Spanish pigs and Spanish literature, he who is on far more intimate terms with both the cookery and

Vll viii HOME LIFE IN SPAIN

the modern books of the country. When the old never-satisfied longing for Spain finds me out even in this remote corner of the English country, Charles Rudy's delightful volume, "Companions in the Sierra," can bring the land, that seemed so far away, vivid and palpitating before me. No other books, save those of Cervantes, Borrow, and Cunninghame Graham, can do as much. So my readers, should I have any, will share a debt I am pleased to acknowledge.

S. L. BENSUSAN

^XII.

XIII.

^XIV.

\ XV.

^XVI.

XVII.

XVIII.

XIX.

XX.

/xxi.

XXII.

XXIII.

PREFACE e . . .

Introduction

RECOLLECTIONS OF SEVILLA .

THE CHURCH IN SPAIN .

THE THEATRE IN SPAIN.

THE SPANISH KITCHEN .

ETIQUETTE AND HOSPITALITY .

THE PLAZA DE TOROS .

IN A SPANISH VILLAGE .

LIFE IN THE COUNTRY-SIDE .

LITERATURE IN SPAIN .

SPANISH LAW COURTS AND THEIR JURISDICTION

INDEX .....

PAGE

vii I 6

46 61 76 90 106 122

154 766

IX

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

i The Law of Necessity. (Mother leaving her Little

One to Nurse another Woman's Child) . Frontispiece From the Painting by M. Santa Maria.

FACING PAGE

4 An Old-time Street Scene in Seville . . .32

From the Painting by L. Alvarez.

4After Confirmation 46

From the Painting by Carlo Vazquez.

a Choir Dancers in the Cathedral of Seville, before

AN Image of the Virgin 72

^The Market Place 106

From the Painting by M. DOMINGUEZ Meunier.

^GiRL IN Bull-Fighter's Costume with White Mantilla 137

From the Painting by J. Casado.

Before the Corrida. Fighting Bulls in the Foreground . . . 146

i Sunshine and Shadow. A Street Scene in the South 176

\ Beside the Noria^ or Moorish Water Wheel . . 223

\ In Rural Andalusia — The Rival to the Train . 234

.War. (Two of the Guardia Civil fetching a Recruit) 281

From the Painting by Legna.

Chapter I Introduction

IT IS easier to talk about home life in Spain than to grasp the full significance of the expression. The Englishman who knows Spain fairly well must needs wonder where a description of the country's home life begins or ends. For regionalism is more marked in the Iberian Peninsula than in any other country of Europe, and in some aspects it might be said that Spain is a geographical expression rather than a country.

Four great divisions are apparent to everybody who has visited the country with open eyes and a receptive intelligence. There is the north, including the Basque provinces and inhabited by sturdy, independent men and women who still have a certain number of laws (fueros) that do not apply to other regions ; there is the south, the country of vineyards tenanted by people whose nature has to all outward seeming nothing in common with that of the north. The Andalusian is neither idle nor gay as he is depicted so often ; he has his own highly strung nervous temperament and suffers the sun to work its will upon him without too large a measure of resistance. In the busy, bustling east, Catalonia and Valencia, you have yet another type of Spaniards — men and women — progressive, ambitious, hard-working, and well informed, hating the Castiles that tax them for their i

J idleness, and inclined to be intolerant of the ruling house that stands between them and their republican ideal. Onlj in Catalonia and other parts of eastern Spain can literature be held to flourish, or art claim significance and sincerity, o science boast of a following. And yet, side by side in thi* truly progressive region, we find the sober man of affairs ani the anarchist drunk with dreams of authority overthrown! We find the peaceful, prosperous citizen who greets the taxJ collector's frequent call by lighting yet another cigarette an shrugging his shoulders, and the eloquent orator who ca talk for hours on end, loves high principles nearly as muc as he loves the sound of his own voice and believes that if he talks long enough, loud enough, and with sufficient applause from the loversof well-sounding words, the Millennium will hear him. Practical business and hopeless ideals seem to find a common ground in the east of Spain, but the fact remains that that district holds the business intelligence and the greater part of the country's intellect, and that it is the storm centre of Spain, regarded with deep and ever-growing suspicion by the Church and the State.

In the centre and west we come to the land of vast open spaces where one may ride for hours without seeing more than an occasional granja or farm. A flock of goats or a herd of pigs move across the open country in charge of men or boys as far removed from the twentieth century as the shepherds of the Theocritean idylls. These men or lads know nothing, and care less, of the world that lies beyonc them ; they have dispensed quite happily with education their religion, if any, is no more than a mass of crude and undigested superstitions ; they know the extremes of heat anc cold, of poverty and privation, but as a class they are perhaps happier than the most of those who live in big cities anc have cafes and music-halls within easy reach.

INTRODUCTION 3

Here then we have four distinct regions with nothing in common. But regionalism in Spain is not limited to four districts or to forty. To the Spaniard, the city or even the village of his birth is all the world that matters. When a Spaniard says " mi pueblo^' his mind has gone back to the village of his birth, where his patron saint is enshrined, where the politics are his own, and where his patriotism is localized. The district in which his village is set lies right outside his interests ; the province of which it is a part has no claims upon him ; of his country itself he is supremely independent. History records with a smile that finds much sympathy the story of the valiant Alcalde of Mostoles, a village near Madrid, who solemnly declared war against the great Napoleon on the all-sufficient ground that the rest of Spain seemed to be in two minds upon this serious undertaking. These instances might be multiplied, though not so significantly ; they serve to indicate the depth of root which regionalism has spread in every corner of the land, and by way of an apology for the necessity of dealing in nothing more than general terms with the more varied aspects of Spanish home life, though the outstanding regional differences will be set down.

Englishmen as a class have but the smallest acquaintance with Spanish life and thought For the most part they know only the chief cities of Spain and the leading hotels of those cities, where they encounter a French chef and a London season scale of charges, where Spanish life as Spain knows it is carefully kept from their knowledge. At every turn, on every side, their wants are provided for on the special basis that applies to foreigners. Do they want to see " Spanish dancing," one of the hotel guides is ready to improvise an entertainment that is sufficiently Spanish to satisfy those who know nothing about it. Does one wish to go to a zarzuela or visit the arena de gallos or the plaza de toros, his mentors will see to it that he gets the best seats and incidentally that he pays something considerably in advance of the best prices. But Spanish life and Spanish character are no more accessible to him than the Mosque of Omar in Jerusalem or the Church of the Holy Sepulchre are accessible to a tourist armed with native assurance and Cook's coupons.

The average Spaniard pictures the average Englishman as an aggressive person with prominent teeth, long whiskers, a sun helmet, a green umbrella and pockets full of gold, and the picture does not please the Spanish mind. Quite without enthusiasm the hidalgo^ together with his less distinguished fellow-countrymen, remark the intrusion of John Bull. His enthusiasm for their cathedrals, picture galleries, places of entertainment and the rest awake no response in the Spanish mind, and the average Englishman is careful to say nothing and do nothing that may conciliate the inhabitants of the land he has deigned to favour. Armed with insular pride and circular tickets, he goes everywhere, pries into all things, and thanks Providence for his own special equipment of virtues and his British birth. The Spaniard cannot close his public places, nor would his courtesy permit him to do so ; the foreigner puts money in circulation and the Spaniard says with the Roman Emperor who was reproved for taking a heavy tax from the Jews, " non olet ". But he closes the doors of his own house and opens them to very few. For many years towards the end of the nineteenth century Spain had reason to complain of a lack of British sympathy — more particularly during the terrible time of the Cuban troubles and the American War. The old cry

paz con Inglaterra

y con todo el mundo guerra

INTRODUCTION 5

was heard no longer. There was a feeling that Great Britain should have stood between Spain and the deliberate misrepresentations that led to the conflict which, in the long run, has done Spain more good than harm.

The presence of a British-born Queen in the Palacio Real has brought about a considerable change in public sentiment, and the feeling has been further aided by the frequent visits of King Alfonso to this country. It may well be that in a few years the intimacy between Great Britain and Spain will be deeper and more widely spread. The desired change should certainly follow the advent of a really Liberal Government in Madrid, and it may be that Senor Canalejas, who is now in power, will be able to maintain his position. Then the traveller who desires to spend a few months in one of the most fascinating countries in Europe, among people whose native charm and courtesy are hard to match anywhere, will be enabled to confirm and enlarge the details of Spanish home life set out in the following chapters.

Chapter II

THE average traveller, tourist, or holiday-maker in Spain asked to describe the Spaniard at home would find himself in difficulties at once. He may have some smattering of the language, he may have paid a few ceremonial visits to the houses of friends or acquaintances, but the vie intime of the home is probably a sealed book to him, and it is the purpose of this chapter to remove the seals, or some of them.

All things considered, the Spanish home is a very happy one. There is a certain simplicity of life, a certain measure of good feeling, and a respect for tradition that always has a pleasing influence on the home. However out of date a custom may be, if it has been sanctioned by use through long generations, it gains a beauty that is not perhaps its own through intimate association with the childhood of those who follow it. The life of the home is beset with countless traditions in Spain, and while some few of the customs are deplorable in our eyes, still more are exceedingly gracious.

The modern Spanish house is as much a gift of the Moors as the noria that works on every hacienda in the country. The house is built round a patio or central courtyard which is generally square but sometimes oblong in shape. The patio varies very much according to the district in which the house of which it is a part is built. In the north it is little better than a dingy courtyard ; the broad flags that pave it are often seen to have suffered displacement from the strong weeds and grasses that have sprung up between them. The family washing hangs on lines drawn across the patio, and if the house should be let off in floors, each floor will parade its washing on the same day. As a rule, each tenant occupies one side of the square, and it is by friendly arrangement with an opposite neighbour that the washing lines, which are fastened on pulleys, have running rights to that neighbour's boundary. The patio of the Spanish house, particularly if each side of the house be let to different tenants, has a curious soul of its own ; there are sights and sounds associated with it that we do not find anywhere else. At certain' hours food is being prepared and utensils not to be met elsewhere in Europe are in noisy use. A little later the smell of cooking, a smell that is strictly regional, pervades the patio ; everybody having prepared the same material in the same sort of utensil is now cooking it in accordance with one recipe. In all probability that recipe has not varied for hundreds of years and will survive the reigning house and the dominant faith. Very cheerful, to those a little removed from it, is the chatter of the servants, who go about their work as though time were of no account, flourishing feather brooms or allowing pails to fall on to hard stone floors with a sound that draws expostulation from the mistress of the house who in her turn is probably scolded for interfering, if her maid should chance to be an old family retainer. Sometimes the girls sing as they ply broom and- pail or nurse the latest addition to the household, and one hears quaint folk-songs that have never been set down and seem to clamour for the expert musician to save them from oblivion. And the voices ! Sometimes, of course, they are shrill and harsh enough, but how often are they absolutely true and pure and fresh, of a quality that demands nothing but a little training to fit the singei for some measure of success in a professional career. li there is very little sunshine and very little gaiety in thel natural aspect of the northern patio, it is at least brightened] by many charming aspects of the simple national life.

Down in the south the patio is quite another institution, It corresponds in some measure to the roof-garden in modern] American cities. Screened from the road by double gates] often richly chased, filled with bright flowers planted in pots, generally boasting a fountain whose waters, never at rest,] cool the place during the hours of fire, the patio plays most delightful part in the home life of the south, and has; entered so deeply into the affection of the people, that one of the most popular plays in Spain to-day is the charming comedy **E1 Patio" by the Brothers Quintero. This popular piece is very little more than a series of living pictures taken from an Andalusian patio, but it stirs Spaniards to enthusiasm.

In the patio the lady of the house receives her guests, either during the afternoon or at night when the heat of the best- ventilated rooms is intolerable. Here the hour of the siesta is spent by those who being old and feeble find an added luxury in open-air repose, while the younger members of the household flock to the patio as soon as ** the hours of fire'* have passed. After dinner the mistress of the house receives in the patio, giving her guests sweet cakes and chocolate while her daughters play their own accompaniment on the guitar to soft Andalusian songs, or are persuaded by some lover of the national art to dance one of the national measures. Nowhere else does dancing acquire the same measure of abandon and grace. The stage seems but a poor place for dancing in the eyes of those who have sat in an Andalusian patio and seen a sevillana or ^ijota performed by those who dance as naturally as a bird sings or a flower blooms. A varied company meets in the patio, but as a rule it would seem that the entertainment of the younger generation is the most important, or is it that the old are young in Andalusia, and that Father Time, a little ashamed of the speed with which he pursues poor humanity elsewhere, contrives to relax his pace ? Certainly most of the guests seem to have responded to an invitation from the younger members of the family, but the father will generally find a friend of his own age among the callers, and the parish priest or even some rather higher dignitary of the Church, may look in for brief relaxation after the hard day's work. Who shall name the hour at which these entertainments end ? As late as midnight the gipsy girl picturesque in her rags will probably still be telling fortunes ; she arrived quite late on the road lying between the regions of No Man Knows Whence and No Man Knows Whither. Curious that although the gitana may be hungry and penniless she will show little or no gratitude for favours received. Between her and the community through which she wanders there is a measure of deepest antipathy that nothing will ever remove; she hates the Christians with a fierce hatred that finds its expression in curses, some of them exceedingly quaint, too, like the one addressed so often to those who refuse to have their fortunes told : ** May you be made to carry the mail and have sore feet ". It is perhaps permissible to remark that the gipsies are the worst horse thieves in Spain ; their king rules from Granada where he lives among the rocks of the Barrio de los Gitanos. Their hand is against all men and all men's hands are against them. Often the poor gipsies are punished for offences they have not committed, but still more often they contrive to escape punishment in cases where they are undeniably guilty.

Turning from those who visit the house to the house itself, one finds that, in the south a gallery runs round the first floor and overlooks the patio ; all the bedrooms open upon the balcony. This system of building prevails also in the east, and is fairly common in Italy. In the winter the gallery is closed in with windows (mirddores), while in summer the little green blinds and shutters {persianas) hold a too ardent sun at bay, or at least they do their best

The reja is the heavy open-work shutter that is built often in beautiful wrought iron after a most delightful pattern in front of the ground-floor windows in Spanish houses. Some of the rejas are so beautiful, particularly in the north of Spain, that the innocent traveller passing by night through some old Spanish street, and wishing to examine some reja at his leisure, will often embarrass two lovers of whose existence he was quite unaware ; the man standing motionless in the shadows of the pavement and the girl shrinking modestly behind the reja^ seem to be part and parcel of the place itself, in perfect keeping with the atmosphere and tradition of the street itself. There is nothing to do save raise the hat and make a brief apology that will be acknowledged by a bow and a low muttered " Vaya Usted con Dios " (go in God's keeping). Then you must hurry away and leave the street to lovers and the night.

The floors in Spanish houses are frequently tesselated and on some the mosaic decorations are very beautiful. In most houses they are covered lightly during the winter with thin hemp carpets called esteras, that only serve to keep the dust warm. These esteras are nailed to the wooden border running round the room and amass a tre-

THE SPANIARD AT HOME it

mendous amount of dirt during the winter. On the polished wooden floors of houses belonging to the wealthy, carpets, that have passed through the London or Paris market on their way from the place of manufacture, are frequently to be met. They do not always seem in place. In the summer the floors are kept highly polished, the windows are full of flowers, and the balconies and shutters are arranged so cleverly that the maximum of fresh air is attracted to the room. To appreciate the coolness of the Spanish room, you have but to walk along the sunny side of the pavement and breathe the white-hot air that seems to rise up from the pavement and wellnigh take your breath away, while from the windows above and around a current of cool air comes as though sent by the city's patron saint to refresh the stricken street. Not without trouble and experience has the Spanish housewife succeeded in making her home as cool as natural conditions will permit. The Englishman who sets up housekeeping in Spain and lacks the service of a good native housekeeper will probably find his home uncomfortably hot at a time when the houses or flats of his friends are cool. So proud are the Spanish women at their capacity for subduing " the enemy," as the sun is called, that the relative coolness of their respective apartments is the topic of frequent discussion during the dog-days. In the happy absence of a thermometer — and that useful instrument is unknown to the general public in Spain — each speaker can pledge his or her conscience with complete serenity, and repent at leisure.

The Spanish bedroom holds the bed in an alcove ialcobd)^ and by so doing conforms to one of the least healthy customs that the Moors left in Spain. The alcoba is stuccoed, and in very poor houses merely whitewashed, to keep an all too vigorous insect life at bay. Iron beds are more popular than wooden ones, the single beds being absurdly small and the double beds absurdly large. It is the custom in Spain for the bride to present her partner with the nuptial couch. The bedroom in a Spanish house is comparatively bare ; furniture is scanty, and the chief ornament consists of a plaster shrine with a figure of the local virgin and a few " genuine Murillos," of which nearly every Spaniard has one or two to spare. The writer well remembers how a dear old gentleman in Andalusia offered him a " g'enuine Murillo " at a price that came down slowly from ten thousand pesetas to seventy-five — four hundred pounds to three pounds !

Unfortunately for Spain there is a winter as well as a summer, and in parts of the Peninsula the winter invasion is a very serious one. The Spaniard makes little or no attempt to cope with it. There are still very few houses in which one finds a modern stove and reasonable warmth. For some reason best known to himself the Spaniard likes to believe that his brasero can yield as much heat as is required. There are three kinds of brasero^ the little low one in a wooden frame used among the lower classes, the tall and often beqtutifully chased one that stands on a tripod and makes a beautiful ornament in any room, and another one called the Camilla^ which is a brass bowl, fitted in a permanent frame between the four legs of a table. All three have one quality in common : they can warm nothing but themselves. Even if you put your feet on one in which the charcoal is sufficiently glowing to restore to you some measure of circulation, its effect will probably stop a little below the knees and the rest of you will endure the arctic rigour of the winter days. In some parts of Spain the winter wind goes about in gentlest fashion possible on the lookout for people with weak lungs. When it finds any, they are presented with pneumonia, pleurisy, bronchitis, or any of the kindred troubles that, with the aid of a Spanish doctor, are safe to be fatal. They say of the icy wind that blows off the Guaderrama that so great is its suavedad that while it is not strong enough to blow out a candle it can kill a man. Many a madrileno has found to his cost that this is no idle boast, but then of course Madrid is about the worst residential city of all Spain and only came into existence because Philip \\ wanted a capital near the Escorial. Really, if you wish to be warm in Madrid during the winter season nothing can be better than to make friends with the cook and live in the kitchen. It is the most comfortable part of the Spanish house to those sensible people who do not mind the smell of strong oil and stronger garlic.

The Spanish kitchen is worthy of a chapter to itself, and shall not have any smaller measure of attention when it is time to consider the country's cookery. Just now let us be content to remark that in the towns the kitchen is generally as white as lime-wash will make it ; the walls are wainscotted to the height of a man's shoulder, and the pots and pans hang against them in spotless purity. Copper, polished to the colour of old gold, is one of the most striking additions to the national scheme of decoration, and many a Spanish housewife would rather add a new copper dish to her batterie de cuisine than a new dress to her scanty wardrobe. She still prefers to use the old charcoal stove that her mother and her grandmother's mother used before her. It stands in one corner, high up, so that the dishes are well under the control of their maker, and above the charcoal there is a great bell-shaped funnel that carries the poisonous fumes away. The stove is a fixture and consequently is not likely to be removed, but the modern kitchener and the portable oil-stove are beginning to make a few friends, though a long time must elapse before the Spaniard will regard a modern stove that does not burn charcoal as anything better than a luxury or a vulgar foreign innovation of little worth. The women of the middle class are not ashamed to go into the kitchen and place the results of their prowess before their husband and their friends. Theirs may be at times the faith that casts out fear, for it would be idle to deny that much Spanish cooking is acceptable only to the Spanish palate. But even the imported palate — so it be not a French one — can learn to appreciate Spanish cookery as practised among the middle classes wh( have learnt to exercise a certain amount of restraint when handling oil and garlic. But to discuss cooking in detail now would be to interfere with the proposed order of thes( chapters.

The Spanish housewife of the middle classes is an honest soul, and lovable. She is proud of her home, even if it b( no more than a tiny little piso. She will labour in it day after day in complete contentment. She loves cleanliness and order, and is not afraid to work with her servants in kitchen or parlour. Between her and those who serve then is a curious relationship, not widely known in this country a deep friendship that does not admit of familiarity but is based upon a common measure of respect and appreciation for services rendered. The relations between Don Quixot< and Sancho Panza find many a counterpart in Spain to this day, not only among the men but among the women. Sc it happens that the terrible servant trouble hardly exists ir Spain where you find men and women serving the hous( with the fidelity of watch-dogs, prosperous in the day o their employer's prosperity, and contentedly shabby whert the sun does not shine upon those they serve. It woul( not be too much to say that in many of the serving class all the virtues that endear the Spaniard to those who have the good fortune to know him intimately seem to find a home.

Although a Spaniard may be full of blue blood and pride there is a certain strain of democracy in him that finds expression at home. In short, it may be said that he is accessible to his own household though he be inaccessible to everybody else in the world. Outside the ranks of the grandees and the nouveaux riches it is no uncommon sight to see the servant sit at the master's table where he or she seems to fill the vacant place quite naturally without assumption or familiarity. On his saint's day the servant becomes the host and the master the guest, and the kitchen or servant's hall the place of entertainment. On this great occasion the servant buys wine and cakes to entertain the master who meets the other friends of the servant, and joins them on equal terms. In the same way the maid entertains her friends on her name-day and her mistress is among her guests. Doubtless this good understanding accounts for the excellence and continuity of Spanish domestic service. It may be unnecessary to say that every Spanish child is named after a saint whose day in the Roman Catholic calendar becomes the child's name-day.