Idle Days in Southern Spain
From Home Life in Spain by Samuel Levy Bensusan, 1910.
From: 1910 C.E. To: 1910 C.E.
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 It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.
From Home Life in Spain by Samuel Levy Bensusan, 1910.
Idle Days in Southern Spain
The joy of travelling in Spain will never be understood by the great majority of restless tourists who make their journey to the south by way of the Pyrenees and Madrid. Nor will the pleasure of life in Don Quixote's country be known to the patrons of hotels that have nothing more Spanish than a French chef and a British scale of charges. But let the traveller turn into Andalusia's by ways and he will find that, though the costume of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries has suffered change, in all or most other aspects life seems to pass along much the same road as in the days when Goya's marvellous brush recorded the society of which the rest of Europe knew little or nothing.
"Civilization ends at the Pyrenees" we have been told by men who should have known better, but we may never justly forget that Spain as an Empire has filled the foreground of Europe. Had she survived the grip of the Church, and the too ardent splendour of the sun, she might have stayed there. Perhaps purely western civilization ends at the Pyrenees, that is all. But I do not propose to speak of Spanish history or politics in this place. I have done no more than refer to my notebook for odds and ends of travel impressions, to present them here without elaboration or heightened colour. My first visit to the Iberian Peninsula was paid in the early nineties when I was but twenty-one and knew few other countries. Since then I have been a wanderer in many lands, but Spain comes back to me with perennial freshness, and if inclination guide my footsteps it is there my holidays are spent.
The idlest of all idle days may be passed in a Spanish train. It is no roaring, bustling affair like the trains of other countries; it is something that contributes to the interest of village life, stimulates gossip, and quite incidentally takes passengers from one place to another in manner befitting a country that has never learned to hurry. I remember how when going on a short journey in Andalusia, the train that carried me stopped at a small junction. The station buildings were all on one side of the line, and included a charming little farm-house and a glittering flower garden half-screened from passengers by a wall of undried tapia.
Tickets were issued in the farm-house kitchen which was made as official as possible by the presence at its door of two members of the Guardia Civil who were on duty. These good fellows smoked cigarettes and chattered affably with passengers, but bore real carbines and wore cocked hats that no evildoer might seek to carry off train or station, or even hold passengers to ransom. While we were at rest here, after some hours of travel at the rate of at least twelve miles an hour, the driver uncoupled his engine and proceeded down the line with it in the direction we were not to take.
The passengers walked contentedly up and down, smoked countless cigarettes, ate oranges, resisted the importunities of beggars, or watched the bloom of figs, pears, and quinces in the orchard and the acacias in the garden beyond. At last I became uneasy and asked where the driver had gone. "Pedro has run down the line on his engine to take a birthday gift to his mother who lives over there," explained the stationmaster; "he is indeed a good son, and will not trust his parcel to the post. Spain is full of thieves." And when the good son had come back from his mission he restored the engine to its proper position, and we re-entered the train which went on its journey after three quarters of an hour's delay.
On another occasion, just as we were leaving a wayside station some young turkeys escaped from the garden, and the stationmaster stopped the train lest it should do any damage to them. As some of the passengers were in a hurry that day, they left their carriages and with the aid of broom and sticks provided by the stationmaster's wife, hunted the errant poultry home. Then we were allowed to proceed. While time is your servant all this does not matter; if he be your master of course you do not go to Southern Spain. Even between Algeciras and Bobadilla, over a line that is well managed by a Scotsman, the Spaniard manages to leave the route supremely interesting and to make the least possible surrender to the business instincts of the Saxon. If we take Sevilla or Cordoba for our objective—and surely there are no cities in Europe that invite more pleasantly to idle days—it is well to choose this route, more particularly if you have travelled by sea to Gibraltar, as so many people do.
In England no man is a hero because he travels by rail; in the villages of Southern Spain I am inclined to think the case is different, and that you advance in the social scale in the Andalusia country-side if you have so much as a friend who travels in a train. When the engine pants into the station, conscious of a great task nobly done, all the villagers have assembled to meet it. The function corresponds in Andalusian fashion to Church Parade in Hyde Park. The stationmaster moves with an air of distinction through one of the most interesting crowds to be seen anywhere. Children—of whom three out of four are beautiful—are present in great numbers; there is no school board to make them scholars in spite of themselves. Very often the girls have no shoes or stockings, but nearly all have a flower in their hair, or a handkerchief arranged as a mantilla.
Many unoccupied men are to be seen; all are smoking, nearly all have forgotten to shave. Beggars, who seem to thrive by the exercise of their profession, go from carriage to carriage, pleading for charity in most pitiful accents. Happy is the man who can boast a mutilated limb or an incurable disease that has outward and visible manifestations. The healthy members of his brotherhood look upon him with keen envy. The few people who, by some unfortunate accident, were born industrious, march up and down the platform with big earthenware jars full of water, for heat and thirst are chronic. Girls carry baskets of oranges, and in all the larger stations you may find modest refreshments provided at a stall, generally in the shape of rolls half cut through to aid the insertion of a slice of greasy sausage.
Seeing the amount of public interest taken in the train's arrival, the stationmaster would be a callous fellow indeed if he sent the long-expected visitor away too soon. I am inclined to think that he enjoys his official position immensely; indeed, I have seen him stroll up and down in front of the train with his wife on his arm and his numerous family at heel as though he felt he had not lived in vain. Only when he realizes that the train has done its duty by the district does he ring his bell with an energy and vigour worthy the occasion. He rings until he is tired, and then the train moves off very slowly, and the ticket tormentor appears suddenly from the knifeboard and demands your ticket that he may mutilate it further. I believe that the ticket collector must be a lineal descendant of the old-time Inquisitors.
Nothing else will account for his cruel pleasure in defacing the tickets entrusted to his care. He has all the suspicion of an Inquisitor too, and will appear before you suddenly at odd times of the night, as though fearful that some intruder has reached the carriage by way of the lamp-hole or by jumping on to the knifeboard that is his own happy hunting ground.
The journey to Sevilla, by way of Algeciras and Ronda, or even by the lesser-known route from Huelva, is full of curious interest. Villages on either side recall the Moorish occupation of Spain. They are screened with hedges of cactus, aloe, and prickly pear, in fashion that suggests an Arab douar. Here and there one passes cork woods, the dark-red trunk showing beneath the stripped bark; a file of mules, loaded with the produce of the woodlands, plods over the tracks to the music of their own tinkling bells, in charge of a gaily-clad muleteer. Olive and eucalyptus fringe the woods, and in spring the yellow gorse flames along the hill-sides where patches of brilliant broom and iris help to lend variety to the colour schemes.
Between the stations are the huts of the signal men or women, and as he approaches one of these, the driver always puts on steam and passes at top speed as though to remind the watchers that a train accustomed to stop in railway stations cannot communicate, even distantly, with mere hand-signal folk. There are orchards along the road whose colour in blossoming time is a feast to the eye, and in spring the southern land is so full of flowers that one might think April had showered down roses instead of rain. Even the hard workers seem to enjoy themselves, and to remind the travellers that when the Moors were in Andalusia they raised three crops a year from one field.
Now and again the engine runs—no, I should say strolls—through valleys cut in the limestone rock, and there one may look for romantic caves and rushing waterfalls, while the overwhelming whiteness of the earth seems to lend a deeper blue to the sky, a keener freshness to the air. Here and there one passes a bull-farm, where the fierce animals are bred for the Plaza de Toros. You see the bulls feeding peacefully, knee-deep in lush grasses born of the first rains, with some ganadero or bull-farmer—always a horseman and a dandy—watching over their welfare.
Anon one encounters a herd of pigs driven by some barefooted lad who is puffing at a cigarette, though in all probability he has not a real to his credit. Poor he may be, and hard-worked, but he has all the sunshine he requires, sufficient food, of the coarsest kind, and no knowledge of the more complicated problems that come into life side by side with education. So he passes along the dusty road that winds like a white thread amid the fields, singing to his heart's content as he drives his restless charges to pastures new, and the pigs do not mind his singing so long as he finds them roots and acorns in plenty. Sometimes when he has found suitable pasture for his charges, he turns his thoughts to music and plays a pipe, as did the shepherds whom Theocritus has made immortal.
If you travel far enough on the Spanish railway you come to a really big junction, where trains congregate and a long dejeuner is served in the restaurant. There you may chance to find the train that carries his Spanish Majesty's mails, the "Oficina Ambulante Servicio de Correos". It is splendidly blazoned, and is as full of pride as of letters, but it is never in a hurry. I remember some years ago reaching Bobadilla Junction on a journey to the capital. A mail train southward bound was in the station. I was preparing to make my way to the buffet when the guard warned me to stay where I was. "We are not going to stop," he explained, "we are late already." I could see the restaurant and hear the stimulating clatter of spoons against plate; I saw white-aproned waiters moving with dignity to and fro, laden with the good things of the earth. I felt inclined to let the train go on its way, but in the morning I had wired to a friend to meet me in Madrid, and delay would have cost me twenty four hours.
So I remained as disconsolate as the Peri outside the gate of Paradise, and far more hungry. Some twenty-five minutes later the engine driver ceased to talk politics with his brother of the mail train and a small group of unshaven patriots, and condescended to accept the longstanding invitation of the signals. When the train reached Madrid on the following morning my friend was nowhere to be seen. Slowly though we had travelled, we had outpaced the telegraph office, and my telegram arrived in the afternoon. Perhaps it was sent by post. In countries where public service is poorly paid, and business is a negligible quantity, stranger things happen, and the secrets of the Spanish post office are as many, though not so gruesome, as those of the Inquisition.
Even night travel on Spanish trains is full of interest, and the evening colour along the line is splendid. The sunsets, with some wonderful scene painted on a background of gold in manner that recalls the earliest art of the Tuscan School; the hush that comes over the land with fading light, conjuring up memories of landscapes by Puvis de Chavannes or Camille Pissarro; the blossoming trees that look like ghosts, and the little girls holding signal lights by the side of butts set at some wood's edge, just as though they were kindly fairies—these are things not to be forgotten.
The journey is not without its troubles. When a station is reached little boys come to the railway carriage to shout, "Agua, Agua". Officious porters will insist upon renewing foot-warmers, though the carriage is already unpleasantly hot. Your fellow-travellers have a most unhealthy contempt for ventilation, and, in the miniature whirlwind that follows the sudden opening of the carriage window, the ticket tormentor pays a midnight call to do what further harm he can to the uncomplaining piece of pasteboard under the cover of darkness. But as soon as the morning comes, you forget these discomforts, and when you see shepherd or goatherd lying on the grass and piping to some Amaryllis who sits not too far away, you may think for a moment in Milton's words that "Time has run back to bring the Age of Gold".
It is time to leave the train now, for to tell the truth the days one spends there are not quite idle. The scene shifts too rapidly; the call upon the eye and ear are too insistent, and even the Spanish train takes you to your destination, if you will bear with it patiently. For me the two idlest and sunniest cities of Spain are Cordoba and Sevilla, both on the Guadalquivir, both steeped to the turrets in the Moorish tradition. Indeed, Guadalquivir is no more than the native rendering of Wad el Kebir, which is Moghrebbin Arabic for " The Great River ".
When the train leaves me at Cordoba and ambles off with other travellers bound elsewhere, I like to banish all thoughts of the larger world, and to be as far removed from letters and newspapers as are the monks and hermits of the Sierra Morena, the hills that girdle Cordoba and may have heard the echoes of Rozinante's hoofs when Don Quixote fared abroad to win undying fame for Dulcinea de Toboso.
The little city is quite Moorish, almost as Mohammedan in aspect and feeling as it was in the far-off days when the Caliphs held sway, when the mueddin looked out over the Court of Oranges, where Abdurrahman's fountain splashes still, and when the echoes of his sonorous call to prayer rolled through the Hall of a Thousand Columns. Some seven hundred of these pillars still remain. They are of the rarest marble, and not easily to be seen in the perpetual gloom—a gloom which in the palmy days of Islam was dissipated by eight thousand lamps. Even to-day the Court of Oranges has much of the aspect of the East, and the beggars who sun themselves there or seek the shade of cypress or of palm during the "hours of fire" seem to be part of a world that has nothing in common with the twentieth century.
Cordoba is a city of narrow streets, built to give shade to the passers. There are few windows to the houses, and those are heavily barred. The pavements are cobbled, there are not many vehicles, even if we include the antique berlinas drawn by mules. The great Mosque has become a cathedral, and its famous chamber, with shell-shaped roof—cut from a single piece of marble, richly inlaid with mosaics, and once the abiding-place of a world-renowned copy of the Koran—is now a chapel. They say that Charles V seeing the changes made by his clergy, said: "You have erected what any man might have built; you have destroyed what was unique in the world".
In the sleepy market-place, where the glow from the oranges and lemons seems to light up the dark faces of the women who sell them, there are countless little cicadas for sale in tiny cages. The poor little insects have no room to turn round, but they sing as cheerfully as they did among the tree-tops in the days when they were free. Life here, as in other parts of Spain, is full of cruelty; the indifference to the sufferings of what we are pleased to call lower forms of life is very noticeable. Cordoba has one cafe beloved of the bull-fighting fraternity, where I have seen the famous Rafael Guerra, Spain's greatest bull-fighter, now retired. I remember the days, nearly fifteen years ago, when he was at the top of his form, and could kill as many as nine or ten bulls a day, travelling in order to do so from one town to another by special train. Then he was so well-beloved of the populace that he could draw an income of thirty or forty thousand pounds a year from his poverty-stricken country.
To-day he is rich beyond the dreams of avarice—a Spaniard's dreams—and has a great estate outside Cordoba, this quaint old city wherein, folks say, his father worked as a butcher. You see toreadors in plenty at this same cafe of his special choice, vigorous, athletic men, who wear short coats, open-worked shirt-fronts, and tight waistbands and have their hair in a pigtail called .the coleta. There is a bull-ring close to the railway station, but it is a plaza of the second class, in no way renowned. They say Guerrita swore when he retired that he would fight no more until Spain is a republic. Spain must hurry up.
In Cordoba you may be idle all day. Time himself seems to drop the hot-foot pace at which he drives the bustling West. Such industries as the place may have are chiefly agricultural. The shopkeepers do not seek custom, and if it come in the hours when they are wont to take a siesta, they positively resent it. I remember visiting an old bootmaker's shop at one or two o'clock in the afternoon, when I should have been asleep. He told me as much, and as my Spanish ran very lamely to apologies and explanations, it was some time before I could get the sorely tried man to accept my expressions of regret. Then when the boots were purchased, he had no change, and wanted me to give him back the boots and come on the following day!
In the wayside ventas and ventorillos you find the same attitude. You can have what is to hand and must cheerfully forego the rest. No discipline could be better for the tourist who imagines that the earth and the fulness thereof are at his disposal so soon as he is pleased to loosen his pursestrings. Residence in Cordoba would set him right, but then tourists do not visit the town, or if they do, it is only for a night and a day. They see little or nothing of the city in its home aspect, though they may get a glimpse at the wonderful monasteries, the palaces, hospital, colleges, the prison that was formerly the royal palace of the Alcazar. They can never realize or appreciate the more subtle quality of a city that ranked once as the most important in Spain, home of the first Roman colony in the country, capital of the Moorish dominions, and, even to-day, so conscious of its high descent, that none of the storms which agitate less stately cities can stir its deep content. Learn to accept the lesson Cordoba has to teach, and you have mastered no little part of the art of rational living.
By night the sereno, or watchman, keeps watch and ward over Cordoba's safety, though it is permissible to suggest that nobody in the city has sufficient enterprise to set up business as a burglar. Indeed, the malefactor, were he young and active, could deal readily with the sereno, who is old and feeble. To be sure he carries a lantern, a spear, and a rattle, but his hardest task is to proclaim the hour in the wake of the city's clocks, to declare that the face of the night is fair or cloudy, and to praise the Maria Santisima from whom all blessings flow. Yet the sereno presents a welcome figure as you stroll into the city in the small still hours from some country-side inn that knows no licensing laws, and will supply all your simple wants until the proprietor can no longer keep awake. The sereno will courteously lead you home if you have lost the clue to the maze of streets lying so peacefully under the pale light of the moon, and though he be as poor as the cathedral mice, he is every inch a gentleman, your friend and obliging companion. Even the little tribute that marks your parting does nothing to lower him in his own eyes or yours.
From Cordoba to Sevilla it is no far cry. You can make a walking journey of it in four days by way of Carmona and Alcala, an easy ride in three, and if you are in a hurry—a most unlikely case—you can ride hard, or if too tired for violent exercise you can take the train. The dusty road is best for all its faults, and for all the roughness of its wayside accommodation.
On the road by the Guadalquivir's banks, in a part where some cypress-trees gave the surrounding country quite a melancholy aspect, I once met the most tattered beggar I have ever seen. Only the special grace of the Maria Santisima kept his rags together; his worldly possessions were a staff, a frayed leather wallet, a piece of hard bread, and a couple of oranges. And yet he was as human as that St. Felix whom Murillo painted; his happiness was positively infectious; he sang an old ballad with a powerful voice that had a good sense of music, and when I gave him a handful of cigarettes and a couple of reals, he took off his tattered hat and vowed he would not change his state with the King.
Then I noticed for the first time how beside the cypress-trees the yellow broom was flowering, and that the country-side was full of the sights and sounds and scents of the southern summer, and I knew “it is a pleasant thing for the eyes to behold the sun". When I think that the world has been using me ill, or reflect upon the small quantity of moss that rolling stones collect, I remember my beggar friend by the river bank a few miles out of Cordoba, and contentment follows on the heels of recollection.
Bensusa, Samuel Levy. Home Life in Spain. MacMillan, 1910.
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