Iberia (5 page)

Then, to my astonishment, the cortege of black-suited men
came straight at me, and a big crowd gathered behind me, so that
I was wedged into position. President Alcalá Zamora—a fussy
lawyer who was known, in a mixture of affection and contempt,
as Botas (Old High Button Shoes)—spoke casually to several
people in the crowd, then stopped and faced me.

‘You are a stranger, I believe?’

Not many get to Teruel,’ and he was gone.

 

‘An American,’ I said.

 

‘Ah, norteamericano. How do you like Spain?’

 

‘The fireworks last night,’ was all I could manage.
‘What else have you seen?’

 

‘Teruel.’

 

There was a long silence, and the president softly said, ‘Teruel.

When I returned to the hotel I found that the picador had
departed with Ortega’s cuadrilla for a fight in some other part of
Spain but had left me an envelope containing a free ticket for the
novillada (a bullfight in which novices rather than full matadors
appear) scheduled for that afternoon. The young matadors put
on a fight of some skill even though facing bulls somewhat smaller
than the full matadors had fought. Having tasted the day before
the essence of bullfighting in the work of Lalanda and Ortega, I
was eager to apply what I had learned to a less professional
performance. I saw much that day and have often wondered who
the three aspirants were. Did they go on to glory? Were they men
whose names I am now familiar with? Or were they merely three
more among the hundreds who manage a fight or two in Valencia
or Sevilla or Córdoba and then vanish? I suppose there must be
some way I could track down their names, because for that one
Monday in Valencia they were proficient.

When the time came for me to leave Valencia, I reflected: I’ve
seen the best Spain has to offer. The well-dressed businessmen.
The luxurious clubs, they’re as good as any in Europe. The gaiety
of a first-class fiesta. Good hotels, good restaurants, good
entertainment. A substantial city that seems to be well run. I’ve
even seen the president himself, moving unguarded among his
people and willing to talk with a norteamericano. I have seen
Spain.

But as I rode out to the port of Valencia to rejoin my ship for
the long haul back to Scotland, I could not help recalling the
peasants of Teruel and the abysmal and almost terrifying poverty
that was their lot. Between these two Spains, and remember that
I had not yet seen the superarrogant nobility of Sevilla, there
existed such a gap that I simply could not bring it into focus. It
was like the test the oculist gives you when you have weak eyes:
‘You will see before you two halves of a picture. Use all your
muscles to make them form one single picture. Try! Try!’

Now, if the two halves are things like a countryman in Scotland
as opposed to a banker in Edinburgh, there is at first a discrepancy,
but as one exercises his muscles he can bring them together into
one fused portrait of Scotland that is not difficult to comprehend.
The countryman remains a countryman and the banker a banker,
and they can stand side by side with no embarrassment. In the
same way you can fuse a coal miner in Johnstown, Pennsylvania,
and a storekeeper in Pittsburgh. But to fuse the rural peasant of
Teruel and the rich clubman of Valencia lolling in his leather
chair after a gorging meal was for me impossible, and I began at
that moment to formulate that series of speculations regarding
Spain which were to exercise me for the next decades. Whenever
I read about Spain it was to find answers to these questions, and
remember that they were posed some years before the Civil War
disfigured the country. These are the questions of peace, and
whenever I traveled in Spain or talked with Spaniards in America
or England, I continued to study only these permanent questions.
Later, after the war had ended, I applied myself to these
speculations and did not torment myself with questions as to who
was right or wrong in the war, for I have always regarded Spain
as my second home and I have wanted to know about its enduring
quality, not its current preoccupations. These are the speculations
which have concerned me.

Speculation One
. Spain and Italy are both peninsulas that jut
out from the mainland of Europe, and in the north each is marked
by mountains which formerly cut the inhabitants off from the
main intellectual and political movements of the continent, but
Italy was able to adjust to those continental movements and even
to mold and lead them whereas Spain was not. Why? It is true
that for a relatively brief period during the reigns of Carlos V and
Felipe II, Spain succeeded in reversing this tradition and in
governing much of Europe, but in the long run of her history she
was emotionally confined to her peninsula whereas Italy was not.
Why?
Speculation Two
. In the period of greatness referred to above,
Spain faced east toward her possessions in Italy, north toward her
important holdings in the Low Countries, west toward her vast
empire in the Americas and south toward involvement in Africa,
but she never seemed able to make up her mind as to where her
basic interests lay and thus frittered them all away. Why this
indecision?
Speculation Three
. During a period of some four centuries prior
to 1492, Spain had shown herself more hospitable to varied
cultural, religious and ethnic groups than any other major power,
including those in Asia and Africa, and this tolerance appeared
to be an established way of life, yet with startling speed she
reversed herself and extirpated from Spanish soil all Jews,
Muslims, Protestants, Illuminati and Jesuits, transforming herself
into one of the most homogeneous and frightened people in the
world. What accounted for this dramatic reversal?
Speculation Four
. With her drive toward uniformity and
centralism, why has it been Spain who has preserved so strongly
a regional pattern of life? With her devotion to a royalist theory
of government, why has she so persistently produced strong
democratic movements? With her love of personal freedom, why
has she repeatedly sought her major solutions in dictatorial forms
of government, and why do these work so well with the Spanish
people?
Speculation Five
. Why did Spain, when she was already one of
the richest countries in Europe, spend so much energy gaining
control of the riches of the New World, then allowing this influx
of gold and silver to generate an inflation which converted her
into the poorest country in Europe and one of the poorest in the
world? This is a perplexing question, for it touches upon one of
the real tragedies of history and has implications for present
nations. I used to consider this self-impoverishment of Spain a
tragedy that could not be explained and assumed that it had
occurred without anyone’s being aware of the problem; but that
is not so. Recent studies have proved that certain Spanish theorists
in the sixteenth century understood that a sudden importation
of raw wealth which had not been created by productive work
within the nation would create an inflation which would bankrupt
Spain, and they warned against it. But they were not listened to.
Why?
Speculation Six
. Prior to the industrial revolution which
re-formed the face of Europe, Spain was a leader in the
manufacture of quality goods, a leader in world trade and a leader
in agriculture. Had she merely projected this leadership at a
normal rate of growth and had she been able to make the relatively
simple adjustments that were afoot throughout the rest of Europe,
she would probably have remained the leader in manufacturing,
trade and agriculture and might even have improved her relative
position. Instead, almost consciously and with calculated
arrogance, she dedicated herself to an opposite course. She
hamstrung her manufacturers, restricted her trade and crippled
her agriculture. Within a few generations world leadership in
these crucial fields had passed into the hands of France, Germany
and England, and to a lesser degree, Italy. Who can explain this
extraordinary series of wrong decisions?
Speculation Seven
. For several centuries Spain was one of the
exciting leaders in art, music, drama, poetry, the novel,
philosophy—both as producer and consumer. Then abruptly the
leadership was abandoned. The traveler to Spain can have no
more perplexing an experience than to visit the Prado Museum
and see there the paintings of Italians like Titian, of Flemings like
Roger van der Weyden and of Germans like Dürer and to realize
that during the lifetimes of those men Spain was the art capital
of the world, and then to search in vain for a Spanish museum
which contains comparable samples of the Frenchman Cézanne,
the Italian Modigliani, the Russian Soutine, the Austrian
Kokoschka or the German Klee. One fails to find the work of even
Spanish-speaking artists like Picasso, Miró, Orozco and Rivera.
What can explain this dramatic volte-face?
Speculation Eight
. No aspect of Spain is more perplexing to the
foreigner than her passionate devotion to the Catholic Church,
which she has defended at heavy cost in wealth and manpower,
while never being reluctant to oppose the Pope when she
considered him in moral or political error. Several times Spanish
kings mounted armies to attack the Vatican, and both Carlos V
and Felipe II, who are described in Spanish history as the
nonpareils of Catholic orthodoxy, were excommunicated because
of their anti-Rome behavior. Papal decrees were often refused
entrance into Spain; Spanish kings and cardinals simply refused
to promulgate them, and even today there is a tendency for the
Spanish Church to consider one of its main tasks to ‘save Rome
from itself.’ Such contradictory behavior is one of the continuing
anomalies of Spanish history.
Speculation Nine
. On my first day in Teruel I found that the
contradictions I was becoming aware of could be explained only
by reference to what might be termed the central mystery of
Spanish psychology. How can the Spaniard, who is so outgoing,
so earthy, so in love with the trivia of daily existence, be at the
same time so withdrawn and inwardly mystical? In this book the
reader will not find an answer to this permanent enigma, but he
will find, I hope, certain illustrations of it from which he can draw
his own conclusions.

In other words, to travel in Spain is not like traveling elsewhere.
The people are exciting, but so are they in Greece; the land is
compelling, but so is it in Norway; art forms like flamenco, the
bullfight and the decoration of the central plaza are unique, but
so are the art forms of Italy; and if reflections on Spanish history
drive the stranger to speculation, so do reflections on German
history. What makes Spain different is that here these speculations
are positively unavoidable. The people are so dramatic in their
simplest existence that one must identify with them, and when
one does he begins to think like a Spaniard; the art forms are so
persuasive that the stranger is sucked into their vortices, even
against his will; and the problems of history are so gigantic and
of such continuing significance that one cannot escape an
intellectual involvement in them. Some travelers, of whom I am
one, find also an emotional involvement in Spanish history, and
when this happens we are lost, for then Spain haunts us as it has
haunted our predecessors, Georges Bizet, Henry de Montherlant,
George Borrow and Ernest Hemingway.

What I am saying is that Spain is a very special country and
one must approach it with respect and with his eyes open. He
must be fully aware that once he has penetrated the borders he
runs the risk of being made prisoner. I believe I sensed this danger
on that silvery dawn many years ago when I stood off the shore
of Burriana and watched the heaving men and the straining oxen,
dimly aware that in nearby Castellón there was a fiesta which
awaited me and in the hills cold Teruel, which would be forever
one of the principal cities of my mind. I knew then that Spain
was a special land, and I have spent many subsequent trips
endeavoring to unravel its peculiarities. I have not succeeded, and
in this failure I am not unhappy, for Spain is a mystery and I am
not at all convinced that those who live within the peninsula and
were born there understand it much better than I, but that we all
love the wild, contradictory, passionately beautiful land there can
be no doubt.

II
BADAJOZ

Badajoz still lay forty miles to the north. In a hot bus that talked
back to itself I was plodding through the vast region called
Extremadura, that empty, rocky section of Spain lying southwest
from Madrid along the Portuguese border. It was a day of intense
heat, with the thermometer well above a hundred and ten. For as
far as I could see there were no towns, no villages, only the brassy,
shimmering heat rising up from the plains and the implacable
sky without even a wisp of cloud. When dust rose, it hung in the
motionless air and required minutes to fall back to the caked and
burning earth. I saw no animals, no birds, no men, for they refused
to venture forth in this remorseless heat.