Katharine Bates - Spanish Highways and Byways

A tourist in Spain can hope to understand but little of that strange, deep-rooted, and complex life shut away beyond the Pyrenees. This book claims to be nothing more than a record of impressions. As such, whatever may be its errors, it should at least bear witness to the picturesque, poetic charm of the Peninsula and to the graciousness of Spanish manners.

"There is a difference between Peter and Peter." – Cervantes: Don Quixote .

"Spain is a contradiction," was the parting word of the Rev. William H. Gulick, the honored American missionary whose unwearied kindness looked after us, during the break in official representation, more effectively than a whole diplomatic corps. "Spanish blood is a strange mezcla , whose elements, Gothic, African, Oriental, are at war among themselves. You will find Spaniards tender and cruel, boastful and humble, frank and secretive, and all at once. It will be a journey of surprises."

We were saying good-by, on February 4, 1899, to sunshiny Biarritz, whither Mrs. Gulick's school for Spanish girls had been spirited over the border at the outbreak of the war. Here we had found Spanish and American flags draped together, Spanish and American friendships holding fast, and a gallant little band of American teachers spending youth and strength in their patient campaign for conquering the Peninsula by a purer idea of truth. Rough Riders may be more pictorial, but hardly more heroic.

We were barely through the custom house, in itself the simplest and swiftest of operations, before the prophesied train of surprises began. One of our preconceived ideas went to wreck at the very outset on the industry of the Basque provinces. "The lazy Spaniard" has passed into a proverb. The round world knows his portrait – that broad sombrero , romantic cloak, and tilted cigarette. But the laborious Spaniard can no longer be ignored. Even at Biarritz we had to reckon with him, for the working population there is scarcely less Spanish than French. Everybody understands both languages as spoken, and it is a common thing to overhear animated dialogue where the talk is all Spanish on the one side and all French on the other. The war set streams of Spanish laborers flowing over the mountain bar into French territory. Young men fled from conscription, and fathers of families came under pressure of hard times. Skilled artisans, as masons and carpenters, could make in Biarritz a daily wage of five francs, the normal equivalent of five pesetas , or a dollar, while only the half of this was to be earned on their native side of the Pyrenees. Such, too, was the magic of exchange that these five francs, sent home, might transform themselves into ten, eight, or seven and a half pesetas . Even when we entered Spain, after the Paris Commission had risen, the rate of exchange was anything but stable, varying not merely from day to day, but from hour to hour, a difference of two or three per cent often occurring between morning and evening. The conditions that bore so heavily on the crafts were crushing the field laborers almost to starvation. In point of excessive toil, those peasants of northern Spain seemed to us worse off than Mr. Markham's "Man with the Hoe," for the rude mattock, centuries out of date, with which they break up the ground, involves the utmost bodily exertion. And by all that sweat of the brow, they were gaining, on an average, ten or twelve cents a day.

No wonder that discontent clouded the land. We met this first at Pasajes, on one of the excursions arranged for our pleasure by the overflow goodness of that missionary garrison. The busiest of teachers had brought us – a young compatriot from a Paris studio and myself – so far as San Sebastian, where she lingered long enough to make us acquainted with a circle of friends, and, incidentally, with Pasajes. This Basque fishing hamlet is perched between hill and sea, with a single rough-paved street running the length of the village from the Church of St. Peter to the Church of St. John. Nature has not been chary of beauty here. The mountain-folded Bay of Pasajes appears at first view like an Alpine lake, but the presence of stately Dutch and Spanish merchantmen in these sapphire waters makes it evident that there must be an outlet to the ocean. Such a rift, in fact, was disclosed as the strong-armed old ferry woman rowed us across, a deep but narrow passage (hence the name) between sheer walls of rock, whose clefts and crannies thrill the most respectable tourist with longings to turn smuggler. The village clings with difficulty to its stony strip between steep and wave. On one side of that single street, the peering stone houses, some still showing faded coats of arms, are half embedded in the mountain, and on the other the tide beats perilously against the old foundation piles.

Above the uneven roofs, on the precipitous hillside, sleep the dead, watched over by Santa Ana from her neglected hermitage. Only once a year, on her own feast day, is her gorgeous altar cloth brought forth and her tall candles lighted, while the rats, who have been nibbling her gilded shoes and comparing the taste of the blues and crimsons in her painted robes, skurry into their holes at the unaccustomed sound of crowding feet. Pasajes boasts, too, a touch of historical dignity. From here Lafayette, gallant young Frenchman that he was, sailed for America, and probably then, as now, little Basque girls ran at the stranger's side with small hands full of wild flowers, and roguish Basque boys hid behind boulders and tried to frighten him by playing brigand, with a prodigious waving of thorn-branch guns and booming of vocal artillery.

But not the joy of beauty nor the pride of ancient memory takes the place of bread. We approached a factory and asked of the workman at the entrance, "What do you manufacture here?" "What they manufacture in all Spain, nowadays," he answered, "misery." This particular misery, however, had the form of tableware, the long rows of simple cups and plates and pitchers, in various stages of completion, being diversified by jaunty little images of the Basque ball players, whose game is famous throughout the Peninsula. We finally succeeded in purchasing one of these for fifteen cents, although the village was hard put to it to make change for a dollar, and was obliged, with grave apologies, to load us down with forty or so big Spanish coppers.

"The lazy Spaniard!" Look at the very children as they romp about San Sebastian. This is the most aristocratic summer resort in Spain, the Queen Regent having a châlet on that artistic bay called the Concha or Shell. It is a crescent of shimmering color, so dainty and so perfect, with guardian mountains of jasper and a fringe of diamond surf, that it is hard to believe it anything but a bit of magical jewel-work. It might be a city of fairyland, did not the clamor of childish voices continually break all dreamy spells. What energy and tireless activity! Up and down the streets, the cleanest streets in Spain, twinkle hundreds of little alpargatas , brightly embroidered canvas shoes with soles of plaited hemp. Spanish families are large, although from the ignorance of the mothers and the unsanitary condition of the homes, the mortality among the children is extreme. Here is a household, for example, where out of seventeen black-eyed babies but three have fought their way to maturity. Spanish parents are notably affectionate, but, in the poorer classes, at least, impatient in their discipline. It is the morning impulse of the busy mother, working at disadvantage in her small and crowded rooms, to clear them of the juvenile uproar by turning her noisy brood out of doors for the day. Surprisingly neat in their dress but often with nothing save cabbage in their young stomachs, forth they storm into the streets. Here the stranger may stand and watch them by the hour as they bow and circle, toss and tumble, dance and race through an enchanting variety of games. The most violent seem to please them best. Now and then a laughing girl stoops to whisk away the beads of perspiration from a little brother's shining face, but in general they are too rapt with the excitement of their sports to be aware of weariness. Such flashing of eyes and streaming of hair and jubilee of songs!