Home Life in Spain, 1910
"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…
Location: Spain
Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.
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 in time 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 However out of date a custom may be, if it has been sanctioned by use through long generations, it gains a beauty that is not- perhaps its own through intimate association with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 singer for some measure of success in a professional career. If there is very little sunshine and very little gaiety in the 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 a 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 "El 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 jota 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?.
[…]
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 (miradores), 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 ester as are nailed to the wooden border running round the room and amass a tremendous 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 well-nigh 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 (alcoba), 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 "genuine 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 beautifully 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 madrileño 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 II 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 who 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 these chapters.
The Spanish housewife of the middle classes is an honest soul, and lovable. She is proud of her home, even if it be 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 there 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 Quixote and Sancho Panza find many a counterpart in Spain to this day, not only among the men but among the women.
So it happens that the terrible servant trouble hardly exists in Spain where you find men and women serving the house with the fidelity of watch-dogs, prosperous in the day of their employer's prosperity, and contentedly shabby when the sun does not shine upon those they serve. It would 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.
It is very easy to keep a servant in Spain however poor you may be; there is little extra expense beyond the cost of food, for the servant is quite content to take wages when they are forthcoming, will sleep in any odd corner in comfort and contentment and is generally very healthy. The conditions prevailing among the poorer classes restrict survival to the very fit in a country where the infant mortality is appallingly high.
Perhaps the presence of the foster-mother in so many Spanish families strengthens the ties between those who serve and those who are served. The average Spanish woman prefers to nurse her own children, and performs the act which is a mother's special privilege with a simple dignity that adds to the natural beauty of the most primitive of all services. In England women are ashamed to nourish their children in public, but in Spain this ugly false modesty does not exist. Women of gentle birth and refinement will not hesitate to fulfil their appointed task on a tram, in a railway carriage, or even in the street, without any loss of self-respect or the respect of others.
Many a woman has the will but not the capacity to rear her own children, but when she finds herself unable to fulfil the mother's first duty, she does not fly to patent preparations that are guaranteed to turn the most puny child into a pocket Hercules. She prefers, if means permit, to send for a wet-nurse (ama) from one of the healthiest parts of the country, those of the Province of Santander being in great demand. They are familiar figures in the streets of big cities. They wear white caps; their hair is dressed in special fashion, a long tress hanging down on either side, and their silver ornaments prove on examination to be made of peseta and half peseta pieces. The ama arrives at her destination with no worldly possessions save her health and the rags she stands up in, but such welcome strangers are immediately made much of. Decent clothes are substituted for the rags, rich food takes the place of the coarse rough fare to which they have been so long accustomed, and the infant thrives in their charge.
At the same time it must be confessed that the ama is very often a tyrant, and is apt to strain the resources of a small household to breaking-point, for she does not take any modest view of her own importance in the scheme of things, and will not compare for a moment with one of the regular household servants in point of good service, patience, or economy.
The best has now been said about the Spanish mother's care for her children; it must be confessed that infant mortality in Spain is on a scale that would strike horror into the hearts of English mothers. Medical science is not exactly in a thriving condition south of the Pyrenees, where a doctor in good practice relies largely upon the Santissima Trinidad and two or three medicines. There is sufficient belief in predestination throughout Spain?a legacy this from Morocco?to atone for all the doctor's mistakes, and there are times of course when the patient's constitution is stronger than sickness and a Spanish doctor in combination.
Unfortunately, these patients are seldom children. In the big cities as in the tiny villages it is no uncommon sight to see unweaned children sucking the small green cucumbers called gherkin (pepinillo), while little tiny children, who can just run about, may be seen on hot summer days eating fruit which is either over-ripe or actually rotten. To make matters worse sanitation is unknown among the poorer classes; indeed sanitary science is not popular in any part of Spain, and consequently dysentery, small-pox, and typhus are more or less endemic, and infantile cholera claims its thousands. Spaniards are a very prolific race, but the incapacity to rear children extends through all classes, and it is no uncommon experience to meet a man or woman who claims to be the sole survivor of ten, twelve, fifteen, or even twenty children, or to meet some old man or woman reduced to indigence, who is heard to regret that of a family of more than a dozen not one has survived to help in the hour of need.
If the mother be ignorant, the ama is more ignorant still, and to make matters worse the average Spanish mother would rather allow a child to have something that is notoriously bad for it than vex the child by withholding it. As a class Spanish mothers spoil their children, and regard with horror the parents whose discipline is strict. They have never heard of King Solomon's dictum, or if they have they ignore it. The effect of this lax up-bringing is very unpleasant, and if it were not for the tremendous mortality among children would be more unpleasant still. But it is not hard to understand that when a woman can only succeed in rearing one child out of three or four she is apt to spoil it.
The Spaniard who survives the kind attention of his ama is duly grateful. As long as they both live she has a moral claim upon him that he never repudiates, and many an old woman in Spain to-day lives in comfort because in the days of her youth she nurtured some baby who contrived to reach man or woman's estate and thrive.
The increasing wealth of Spain, the king's marriage to an English princess, and the arrival of the motor-car beyond the Pyrenees have all served in their way to introduce certain alien elements into the Spanish household in the form of the chauffeur and the governess. The chauffeur is as often as not a Frenchman, but few Spaniards would hesitate in their choice if they had an Englishman or a Frenchman to choose from. The English governess in a Spanish house has a good time, for the consideration extended to her is often greater than any she has experienced at home. Doubtless she undertook her journey with much fear and trembling, and looked to find surroundings of unrelieved gloom amid people of constitutional melancholy.
Her awakening will have been a pleasant one, for in the majority of cases she is likely to find a friend as well as an employer, while the various phases of Spanish social life in which she will have ample opportunity of taking part, will make her work seem very light and pleasant. The chauffeur will hardly have such a pleasant time, for although the wealthy Spaniard has beautiful cars, he has abominable roads, and unless his master be satisfied with the limited attractions of the paseo, the chauffeur's heart will be torn almost as badly as his tyres. " Running repairs" is a term possessing a terrible significance south of the Pyrenees.
The attitude of the average Spanish servant to the foreign chauffeur is distinctly amusing. He cannot quite rid his mind of a belief that the motor-car is an invention of the anti-Christ, and that the last address of the chauffeur was not England or France, but quite another place. He re- gards the car itself with holy horror, and will not often pass it, even when it is at rest, without making the sign of the cross. This of course applies only to those who are at once superstitious and devout, the others will be content with some sign by which they learned in some far-off native village to avert the evil eye.
There is yet another class of Spaniard who, strong in his beliefs, will treat the car with contempt, and he is the most dangerous of all. He is probably related in sentiment if not in blood to the worthy baturro (native of Aragon) who in the early days of Spain's railways is said to have ridden on his donkey down the line. A train came up behind him, slowly of course and with deliberation, as becomes a Spanish train; and the engine driver blew his whistle as hard as he could. The worthy baturro turned round in his tracks and shook his fist at the intruder. "If you don't get out of my way...," and here the story, like this chapter, stops, not without giving the keynote to the next.
Bensusan, Samuel Levy. Home Life in Spain. MacMillan, 1910.
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