Iberia

by James A. Michener

  On the morning of August 15, 1936, this bullring served as the setting for one of the early climaxes of the Spanish Civil War. At the outbreak of the rebellion of General Franco’s rightist army forces against the legally constituted Republic, Badajoz like most of Extremadura had come out in defense of the Republic, but General Franco’s disciplined army units, beefed up with crack Moorish troops from Africa, swept northward along the Portuguese border, ducking into sanctuary in Portugal when necessary, and by a flanking movement isolated Badajoz and defeated the Republicans. The Spanish war now faced its first public test: How would the Franco forces, when the world was watching, deal with the citizens of a city that has surrendered after fighting in defense of the government?

  On that morning of August 15 Moorish troops swept through the city, arresting any men suspected of having aided the government, and many old grudges were paid off. Estimates vary as to the number of prisoners thus collected, but Jay Allen, of the Chicago Tribune, who reached the city some days later, says that after interrogating as many witnesses as possible he reached the conclusion that there must have been about eighteen hundred, including a fair number of women. They were herded into the ugly plaza, marched past the cathedral doors and chased down the Calle de Ramón Albarrán, where spectators on balconies jeered at them as they scurried by. Into the bullring they were herded while the seats in the stands filled with citizens eager to see what was going to happen to their neighbors. Then soldiers of the rebellion, infuriated by reports of atrocities which government troops were supposed to have committed against captured rebels, turned their machine guns on the mass of prisoners and shot them down as they huddled against the yellow striped fence. Those who tried to escape by running were shot in the way partridge and deer are potted in the field. Of the massacre Allen said, ‘There is more blood than you would think in eighteen hundred bodies.’

  Later researchers, working upon a matter which has always been shrouded in mystery and shame, concluded that the figure given by Allen was too high. They pointed out that he did not reach Badajoz until August 23, eight days after the massacre, and that he relied only on the reports of excited and confused witnesses, whose estimates would have to be guesswork. It is now believed that the number who so died may not have been above four hundred, and some question the event altogether. I have never spoken to a man who would admit that he had been in the bullring that day, but once at a café in Sevilla I was shown a man who admitted to having been there. I asked if I could speak with him, and friends approached him, but he stared at me across the tables and shook his head no. Men in the bar said, ‘He told us it was the worst thing a man could see on earth.’

  I cannot permit the bullring at Badajoz to be my last memory of Extremadura. I left the city one morning for a trip to Alburquerque, with the blazing sun overhead in an unmarked sky. There seemed no living thing abroad, neither insects nor birds nor lizards, and when I was thinking that this was a man’s land and that if a young Norwegian or Englishman or American really wanted to test himself he would leave Cádiz in July and proceeded slowly up through Extremadura to Salamanca, and then he would know whether he was man enough to challenge Spain, I saw across the drought-stricken field an old man riding on a two-wheeled cart behind a slow-moving horse. I hailed him and asked how things were, and he said, ‘I’m getting by. My two sons are in Germany. But they’ll come back. Men always come back to Extremadura.’

  III

  TOLEDO

  The city of Toledo, a bejeweled museum set within walls, is a glorious monument and the spiritual capital of Spain; but it is also Spanish tourism at its worst. Anyone who remains in this city overnight is out of his mind, and I was scheduled to stay four weeks.

  I was checked into a ratty hotel whose desk crew must have been trained in the gorilla cage of a second-rate zoo, except that if they had treated animals as they did humans, some society would have prosecuted them. Throwing a key at me they snarled, ‘Room 210.’ They should have said, ‘Cell 210.’

  It was cramped, poorly designed and hot. These inconveniences I could have adjusted to, but in addition it was noisy. In fact, it was so noisy that the clang of ordinary traffic, such as I had heard at Badajoz, was like the muted rehearsal of an orchestra lacking drums, cymbals or trumpets.

  The lone window of my narrow room looked out upon a cramped courtyard occupied by a garage specializing in the repair of motorcycles, one of which had mufflers, and there must have been an epidemic of faulty ignition systems in Toledo, for never had I heard such coughing, choking and spitting as came up from that nest of cycles. The noise was magnified, of course, by the restricted area in which it took place and by the reflecting walls which hemmed in the court.

  Some twenty children played about the doors of the garage, engaged in a game requiring three boys to hold hands while making a dash through the opposition in an effort to touch a truck whose motor was being disassembled by means of hammer blows which struck resisting metal and echoed through the court. The game had three parts: Those holding hands screamed as they ran. The defense screamed encouragement to one another. And the workmen hammering the truck hurled curses at both.

  From a nearby doorway a mother, determined that her son not become a delinquent, screamed an unceasing series of cautions: ‘Diego, stay away from the truck!’ ‘Diego, stay away from the motorcycle!’ ‘Diego, stay away from the big boys!’ Diego, whoever he was, paid no attention.

  Just when I concluded that I had come upon a kind of absolute noise, two additional motorcycles roared into the compound with exploding motors, whereupon the children left their game and screamed approval of the new machines while the workmen banging at the truck bellowed warnings to stay clear of the machines and Diego’s mother issued, at the top of her voice, a new volley of instructions.

  Under these circumstances a siesta was impossible and even resting with my eyes open was forestalled, so I left the clamorous room and decided to explore the city, but when I reached the elevator it was ominously dark. It was out of order, so I walked downstairs and searched for the Zocodover, the lively central plaza which I had enjoyed in years past, and there in relative peace I watched as long-distance motorbuses from Milan, Amsterdam and Stockholm poured tourists into the city. In addition, scores of local buses brought Spaniards to Toledo, so that on this day Toledo must have been one of the busiest tourist cities in Europe. Foreigners came to see the cathedral and the El Grecos; Spaniards came to pay silent homage at their national shrine, the Alcázar, and there were so many people in town it was difficult to find a seat at any of the attractive cafés, and I began to comprehend what a tourist crush had enveloped Spain in recent years.

  If I left the Zocodover, I was confronted, wherever I went, by rows of little shops selling acres of the cheapest tourist junk: damascened ash trays, inlaid penknives, letter openers that tried to make you believe they were ancient Moorish daggers, florid ceramics showing a wan knight tilting at a windmill, and gaudy banners woven with iridescent colors. These graceless shops numbered not in the dozens but in the hundreds, and it was depressing to think that the once-great crafts of Toledo, which had supplied the medieval world with splendid wares, had so degenerated.

  In the early evening I returned to the hotel to try a tardy siesta, but the elevator wasn’t working and when I reached my room the noise from the courtyard was simply unbelievable. New children had joined the games; new motorcycles were being tested; and Diego’s mother had returned to her monitory job with new energy. It was difficult to believe that the taciturn Spaniard of history could make so much noise, but apparently his repression of centuries found voice whenever he came into contact with an internal-combustion engine. No man, I was to discover, derives so much pleasure from racing an engine with the exhaust open as a Spaniard; it is a national characteristic.

  In a kind of numb despair I walked back downstairs, the elevator still being inoperative, and sought a restaurant for dinner. By bad luck I fell into the hands of a restaurant dedicated to t
he business of gypping foreigners, most of whom appeared in the city for only one day and were gone, so that they could be outraged with impunity. I was about to witness an example of this policy.

  The Spanish government, aware that the golden rewards of tourism could evaporate as quickly as they appeared, has taken sensible steps to protect the tourist; the chain of paradors is proof of this. Restaurants are required to offer, in addition to their à la carte menus, a special tourist menu from which one can get a good meal and a bottle of wine at a fixed price. By ordering from this menu one can eat really well in Spain and at about half the price he would expect to pay in either France or Italy.

  But. I sat down, looked at the menu and said, ‘I’ll take fish soup, Spanish omelette and flan.’

  ‘And what wine?’

  ‘Whatever comes with the meal.’

  ‘Nothing comes with the meal.’

  ‘But it says right here …’

  ‘You have to order that. Then it’s extra.’

  ‘But the menu says …’

  ‘You’re pointing at the tourist menu.’

  ‘That’s what I ordered.’

  ‘Oh, no! You didn’t mention the tourist menu.’

  ‘I’m mentioning it now.’

  ‘You can’t mention it now. You’ve got to mention it when you sit down.’

  ‘But you haven’t even given the order to the kitchen.’

  ‘True. But I’ve written it in my book. And it’s the writing that counts.’

  ‘You mean that if I’d said “tourist menu” at the start, my meal would have cost me a dollar and sixty cents?’

  ‘Clearly.’

  ‘But since I delayed three minutes the same meal is going to cost me two-sixty?’

  ‘Plus sixty cents for the wine.’

  I tried to point out how ridiculous such a situation was, but the waiter was adamant, and soon the manager came up, looked at his waiter’s book and shrugged his shoulders. ‘If you wanted the tourist menu you should have said so,’ he grumbled.

  ‘I’m saying so now.’

  ‘Too late.’

  I rose and left the restaurant, with the waiter abusing me and the manager claiming loudly that I owed him for having soiled a napkin, which I admit I had unfolded.

  I escaped but projected myself into an even worse mess, for I chose what seemed to be the best restaurant in Toledo, where I announced quickly and in a clear voice that I wanted the tourist menu.

  ‘What a pity! With the tourist menu you can’t have partridge.’

  ‘I don’t believe I’d care for partridge.’ I had had it on a previous visit and was not too taken with it. ‘Just the tourist menu.’

  ‘But on the tourist menu you get only three dishes.’

  ‘That’s exactly what I want.’

  ‘But on that menu you don’t get special wine, and I know you Americans prefer a special wine.’

  ‘I’ll drink whatever you Spaniards drink.’

  ‘We drink the special wine.’

  I insisted that I be served from the tourist menu, and grudgingly the waiter handed me a menu which offered an enticing choice of five soups, eleven egg or fish dishes, seven meat courses and six promising desserts, but of the twenty-nine dishes thus available, twenty-six carried a surcharge if ordered on the tourist menu. Technically, one could order a dinner that would cost the price advertised by the government, but if he did so he would have two soups, one cheap fish and no dessert. Madrid had laid down the law, but Toledo was interpreting it.

  The passion of Spain.

  As a traveler I work on the principle which I commend to others: No man should ever protest two abuses in a row. Few men can be right twice running, and never three times straight, so I ordered three dishes, each of which carried a surcharge: soup, roasted chicken, flan. The soup was delicious and the ordinary wine was palatable and I sat back to enjoy the meal which had started off so badly.

  Unfortunately, I had chosen a table that put me next to a good-looking, ruddy-faced Englishman whose tweed suit gave the impression that he must at home have been a hunting man. As he finished his soup he said to his wife, ‘First class, absolutely first class.’ He had, as I suspected he might, ordered the partridge, but when the waiter deposited the steaming casserole before him, the Englishman looked at it suspiciously, waited till the water had gone, then asked his wife quietly, ‘Do you smell something?’

  ‘I think I do,’ she replied.

  ‘And do you know what it is?’

  Without speaking she pointed her fork at the partridge, whereupon her husband nodded silently and brought his nose closer to the casserole. ‘My goodness,’ he said in a whisper, ‘this is fairly raunchy.’ In gingerly manner he tasted the bird, folded his hands in his lap and said, ‘My goodness.’

  His wife got a piece of the bird onto her fork and tasted it, looked gravely at her husband and nodded.

  ‘What to do?’ he asked.

  ‘You obviously can’t eat it.’

  ‘I wonder should I call the waiter.’

  ‘I think you’d better.’

  I was now in a relaxed mood and had no desire to see the Englishman make a fool of himself, because obviously he wanted to avoid a scene. ‘With your permission, sir,’ I said, waiting for him to acknowledge me.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I’m afraid there’s nothing wrong with your partridge, sir. It’s how they serve it in Spain. A delicacy. Well hung.’

  With admirable restraint the Englishman looked at me, then at the offending bird and said, ‘My good man, I’ve been accustomed to well-hung fowl all my life. Gamy. But this bird is rotten.’

  ‘May I, sir?’ I tasted the partridge and it was exactly the way it should have been by Toledo standards. Gamy. Tasty. A little like a very strong cheese. Special taste produced by hanging the bird without refrigeration and much admired by Spanish hunters and countrymen. ‘It’s as it should be,’ I concluded.

  The Englishman, not one to make a scene, tasted the bird again but found it more objectionable than before. ‘I’ve shot a good many birds in my lifetime,’ he said, ‘but if I ever got one that smelled like this I’d shoot it again.’ He picked at the casserole for a moment and added, ‘This poor bird was hung so long it required no cooking. It had begun to fall apart of its own weight.’

  Once more I tried to console him: ‘I’ve had Toledo partridge twice before, and I promise you, it tasted just like yours.’

  ‘And you lived?’ He pushed his plate away but refrained from complaining to the waiter. He did, however, look rather unpleasantly at me, as if to reprimand me for trying to convince him that he should eat such a bird.

  At this point the waiter brought my chicken, and I am embarrassed to report that it smelled just like the partridge. It was one of the worst-cooked, poorly presented and evilest-smelling chickens I had ever been served and was obviously inedible. I tried cutting off a small piece, but blood ran out the end and the smell increased. I followed through and tasted it, but it was truly awful and I must have made a face, for the Englishman reached over, cut himself a helping, cut it into pieces and tried one while giving the other to his wife. Neither could eat the sample, whereupon the Englishman smiled indulgently and said very softly, ‘See what I mean?’

  When I tried to erase the taste of that dreadful chicken with a drink in the Zocodover, the effect of the lively square was killed by a couple at the next table who had with them that curse of the modern world, a very loud-playing transistor radio which ground out exactly the kind of cheap jazz I could have heard if I had traveled not to Spain but to Waco, Texas. And when I got back to my hotel the elevator still wasn’t working but the mechanics below me were. Diego and his mother had gone to bed, thank God, but an older set of delinquents were now playing with motorcycle throttles and I was still not asleep.

  I was kept awake not by the motorcycles, which did shut down before midnight, but by television, which from five or six nearby sets, all emptying into my enclosed courtyard,
offered the Spanish-language version of Bonanza, one of the reigning favorites on Spanish television. I doubt if there is any country in Europe which has the unremitting noise quotient of Spain, and on this night I was to understand why. Anyone who has a television set must play it at top volume to let his neighbors know he has it. Anyone who has a motorcycle must run it open-throttle to impress those who aren’t so lucky. And now a family down the alley, who had neither TV nor motorcycle, showed the world what they did have by playing their radio full-blast, with Mahalia Jackson, to whom I am normally partial, bellowing ‘He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands.’ How I got to sleep I don’t know, but early in the morning I was awakened by a dishwasher serenading me with ‘Cielito lindo’ while he dropped cups and saucers.

  And yet it was Toledo that would reveal the essence of Spanish history. It was a city crammed with meaning, and in exploring it I experienced a kind of schizophrenia: my routine living was as unpleasant as I would know in Spain, for the noise grew as the service declined, but the significance of Toledo increased until I felt it to be a spiritual home in which I was a privileged guest. It remains the city which I recall with greatest frequency if not the most affection.

  To appreciate Toledo one must see it from afar, for it is a mighty fortress on a rock. It is practically unassailable and its history has been a succession of sieges, some of which the insolent city withstood for years. From the east the Río Tajo (Tagus) comes wandering out of the plain and bumps into the rock of Toledo. Rebuffed, it turns south, runs almost completely around the rock, then meanders off toward Portugal to enter the Atlantic at Lisboa. It thus protects Toledo on three sides, and to think of the city without the river would be meaningless.

  The northern flank of the city has no river, but an escarpment provides a natural bulwark which armies could not overcome. Within these defenses a considerable settlement grew up in ancient times to serve as the capital of Spain throughout the greater part of its history. The general pattern of the city today is roughly what it was two thousand years ago, for as an official told me, ‘Forty years ago we had a population of about forty thousand. Today we have the same. And forty years from now it will still be the same, unless we build skyscrapers. For we have used up our rock.’