Iberia

by James A. Michener

  ‘Yo soy un ánima infeliz,

  Perdida en este mundo atormentado.’

  (I am a miserable spirit lost in this tormented world.) And as’ he wandered off, singing to himself, the tents of the five circuses were coming down, the parking lot where the carnival trucks waited came back to life and electricians were disconnecting their wires from the multitude of little casetas, which would soon vanish.

  As I stood in the darkness that night I reflected upon the strange development of Spanish history which permitted the nobles to play so important a role without suffering the limitations to their power that overcame their fellows in England, France, Italy, Germany and Russia. In Spain a conde is still somebody and a duque is a near-god. In the year 1400 the arrogant nobles of the major European countries were about equal in the power they exercised, but one by one the other European nations, in the order named, underwent revolutions of fact and spirit which cut back the absolute power of their nobles and transferred that power to a new and educated middle class, from which would come the political and industrial leaders of the future. In Spain this did not happen; on the contrary, the nobles arrogated more and more power to themselves, so that as late as the nineteenth century they dominated Spanish life, especially in the countryside. They told priests what they might and might not preach; they terrorized schoolteachers; they put newspapermen out of business; they exercised control over the cabinet, the army, the Church hierarchy and agriculture. Even today, as we shall see later when discussing a typical business operation in Madrid, they dominate Spanish life. No other nobility in the world compares in power and wealth with Spain’s, and as one watches it in operation the only parallel he can find is the operation of the Hungarian nobility in the late 1700s.

  In her palace stands the Duquesa de Medinaceli, most betitled woman in Spain.

  If the Spanish nobility had exercised a leadership commensurate with its privilege, as was frequently the case in England and France, Spain would have prospered, but that did not happen. When Spain needed industrialization, the nobles said no. When Spain required a first-class army and navy to defend its empire, the nobles insisted upon using these services as their private playthings, with one general for every ten or fifteen men, and so abused the army that it fell from being the best in Europe to the worst. When the Church should have been doing what it did in all other major countries, adjusting religion to a changing world, the nobles, through their occupancy of high positions, refused to allow speculation. No nation in Europe, except possibly Hungary and Rumania, has been so badly served by its upper classes as Spain. With the intellectual and moral capacity to govern, they refused to do so; instead of seeking the common good they sought their own preferment, and the gap between them and the people became tragically wide.

  I think the best light one can throw on the problem of the Spanish nobility is an oblique one shining from Peru, Chile, Paraguay, Venezuela and other Spanish countries of America. In the capitals of Europe one of the standard figures is the exile bearing a name like Juan Jiménez López. He was born in one of the Latin countries of South or Central America and was either elected or appointed to office, which he held for about five years, during which time he stole every peso or bolivar he could and sent it to a numbered account in Switzerland. Señor Jiménez caught the last plane out, said goodbye forever to his homeland and now lives happily and with a certain flair in Europe. Never in his upbringing did he catch a glimpse of what public service meant. Reared on a mixture of pundonor and Viva yo, he had no option but to do what he did, for he felt no obligation to his homeland other than to use it as his milk cow. The defect lay not in Jiménez but in the fact that the Spanish upper classes, from which he at least spiritually sprang, have never undergone indoctrination in the principle of noblesse oblige.

  There was another contributing factor. During the critical years, say 1500–1815, when the nobility of England and France were being either educated or eliminated, Spain was governed in a spirit of absolutism not known in the other major countries save Russia by a series of kings who were not Spanish, and under their system of rule most of the best administrative jobs went to foreigners. Forget the fact that these foreigners stole the country blind, one after another retiring to his homeland with a fortune; forget the savage mismanagement and forget the subversion of law; the important fact was that the Spanish upper classes were thus deprived of the schooling in government which might have modified their insularity, arrogance and general incompetence. Other nations have suffered foreign kings. If Flemish not Spanish was spoken at the court in Toledo, so German not English was spoken in London; but the English upper classes would not permit their German kings to import outside ministers; indeed, it was sometimes the presence of the German king that spurred the English upper classes to greater energy and a more resolute defense of national prerogatives. Therefore, in the period when new lessons were to be learned, the English upper classes were in a position to learn them and the Spanish were not. Later, when it was necessary to make crucial decisions on which the fate of the social order as well as the empire rested, the English had been trained to make those decisions; the Spanish had not and the series of disastrous wrong choices followed.

  The choices were wrong only for the nation and the general welfare. The upper classes looked out for themselves, so that each year the chasm between the very rich and the very poor became greater, until it seemed that all Spain was divided between these two extremes. No region of Spain is better equipped to exhibit this differential than Andalucía, which includes both Córdoba and Sevilla, for here the extremes are even greater than in Extremadura. The poor of the two regions are equally poor, but the rich in Andalucía are much richer; Extremadura has produced few noble families and those not of top power. When one speaks of a ‘grandee of Spain’ he visualizes primarily the great families of Andalucía: aloof, arrogant, powerful, indifferent.

  This was illustrated one hot afternoon as I was driving from Sevilla to Córdoba and was accosted by a workman who said he must get to the latter city. He said, with no reluctance before a stranger, ‘It’s dreadful for a poor man to live in Andalucía. We starve. The rich ones don’t live out here, you can be sure of that.’ When I asked where they did live, he pointed contemptuously over his shoulder at La Giralda. ‘Huddled together in the city where the police and the army and the Guardia Civil can protect them.’ When I asked him why, he said, ‘Because if they lived out here they’d be killed in their sleep. That’s why.’ It is this legacy of bitterness which one sometimes glimpses during the spring feria that otherwise seems so gay. It recalls the perceptive statement made by a Frenchman: ‘Spain has had many revolutions but it has always missed the revolution.’

  In recent years the feria has acquired an international cast which it did not formerly have. So many famous people arrive and so many motion pictures are shot in the surrounding area that the Alfonso XIII, a grand hotel situated not far from the cathedral, the casetas and the bullring, becomes during this period the jet-set capital of Europe. Orson Welles holds court here and American visitors are impressed by the reverence in which he is held by Europeans; he is judged to be one of the six or seven most significant Americans. Audrey Hepburn lends gracia to the old hotel, while Rita Hayworth and Juliette Greco add piquancy. In 1966 the two American princesses, Jacqueline Kennedy and Grace Kelly, stole the show as they paraded their crystal beauty at the various exhibitions. Spaniards were specially pleased when Jackie Kennedy rode through the park dressed in a faultless costume of Andalucía topped by a flat-brimmed hat. They were surprised at her fine horsemanship, and several members of the noble families expressed the hope that she might want to settle permanently in Spain. ‘She is one of us,’ they said. ‘She’d find our way of life congenial.’

  The daily schedule during feria is a demanding one:

  11:00 A.M. Get up. Breakfast on hard roll and coffee.

  12:00 NOON Dress in riding habit and join the parade.

  4:00 P.M. Leisurely lunch
.

  5:00 P.M. Walk to the bullfight.

  8:00 P.M. Visit with friends and talk.

  11:30 P.M. Leisurely dinner.

  2:00 A.M. Drive to the Aero Club for dancing.

  5:00 A.M. Nightcap with friends, then off to bed.

  The above is of course the schedule of a cautious man who prefers to take things easy. If at dawn there is excitement on one of the bull ranches or if Don Angel Peralta is giving an exhibition of horsemanship at his ranch near Sevilla, the true devotee skips the sleep.

  Grand entrance of the bullfighters at Sevilla’s Maestranza, the La Scala of bullfighting.

  As to the bullfights, one evening I dined with Orson Welles, that scowling giant who in his youth had trained to be a matador, and he said in his rumbling voice, ‘What it comes down to is simple. Either you respect the integrity of the drama the bullring provides or you don’t. If you do respect it, you demand only the catharsis which it is uniquely constructed to give. And once you make this commitment you are no longer interested in the vaudeville of the ring. You don’t give a damn for fancy passes and men kneeling on their knees. There used to be this fraud who bit the tip of the bull’s horn. Very brave and very useless, because it played no part in the essential drama of man against bull. Such tricks cheapen the bull and therefore lessen the tragedy. What you are interested in is the art whereby a man using no tricks reduces a raging bull to his dimensions, and this means that the relationship between the two must always be maintained and even highlighted. The only way this can be achieved is with art. And what is the essence of this art? That the man carry himself with grace and that he move the bull slowly and with a certain majesty. That is, he must allow the inherent quality of the bull to manifest itself. Today in Spain we have many vaudevillians and you won’t waste your time completely if you watch them. We also have men of bravery and it’s always rewarding to observe this rare commodity in action. But of the true artists who comprehend the fruitful relationship that ought to exist between man and bull there is only one, Curro Romero. And until you have seen him, my friend, you have seen nothing. For this young man, handsome of face but round of body, can launch passes which are the essence of bullfighting. He is really so good that it’s difficult to believe that this age produced him, for he has the style of the past, when vaudevillians had little place in the arena. Some day you’ll see this boy at his greatest, and I’ll be there, and we shall nod to one another across the intervening people, and you will thank me for having insisted that you go to see him.’ Unfortunately, Curro Romero did not fight when I had tickets, so I had no chance to see him.

  If Córdoba is the apex of the Romantic Movement because of Don Alvaro, or The Force of Destiny, Sevilla is the popular capital because of the works which have used this city as their locale. The story of Carmen takes place in Sevilla and one needs no imagination to see the gypsy lounging in the doorway of the old tobacco factory, second largest building in Spain and now used as part of the university. Spaniards profess to be irritated by the attention given Carmen throughout the rest of the world and claim that it damages the image of Spain, but I have noticed that whenever a Spanish impresario needs a full house, he puts on Carmen. One of the greatest performances came in the bullring at Sevilla; when the brigands filtered onto the stage they came with lanterns from all parts of the ring, and in the gala scenes carriages with prancing horses and three hundred extras filled the ring. Say the Spanish intellectuals with resignation, ‘Carmen is the cross each Spaniard has to bear.’ But others confess, ‘We’re just bitter that it took two Frenchmen to invent her.’

  Naturally, it was here that The Barber of Seville plied his trade and went forth to conquer the theaters of the world. Many other works of a romantic turn have centered on this city, but the most seminal was a curious play which appeared in print, without fanfare, for the first time in 1630, although it may have been on the boards for as long as fifteen to twenty years. Since then many people have wished that they could have been in the audience on opening night, whenever it was, to see the birth of what has become the most ubiquitous legend in world drama, yet one whose significance has never been adequately explained.

  This fateful play was El burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra, and I have left the title in Spanish because of the difficulty English translators have faced with the second word. Obviously we are speaking of the standard hero of the play, and he was a burlador, or one who engages in burlas. Any standard Spanish-English dictionary shows that a burla is a joke, a jest, a trick, a sneer, a gibe, a mockery, a taunt, a scoff, so we are here dealing with what we might call a prankster, and this accounts, I think, for the erroneous titles which English-speaking translators have used: The Rogue of Seville, or Mocker, or Rake. Actually, in Spanish daily life a burlador is a seducer of women and the title should only be The Seducer of Seville, which is not only alliterative but also pertinent to the action. Why English translators have shied away from this simple word, I do not know.

  Who is this seducer? We meet him at the medieval court of the King of Naples, where his uncle serves as Spanish ambassador. He is leaving the bedroom of a duquesa whom he has seduced in the royal palace by posing as her future husband. This incurs royal displeasure, so he flees to Spain, where he is shipwrecked on the Catalan coast and saved by a lovely fishergirl who nurses him back to health and whom he seduces with promises of marriage. He moves on to the court of the Castilian King at Sevilla, where his father is chancellor and where his servant announces that for the good of all maidens a public crier should precede his master with the proclamation, ‘Let all beware of a man who deceives women and is the seducer of Spain.’ The king has learned of the Naples escapade but forgives him, with the stipulation that he marry the duquesa, but before this can be arranged he enters by trickery the house of a noble lady loved by a friend of his and attempts to seduce her. When her father, the Comendador de Calatrava, rushes in to protect her honor, the seducer kills him. He now flees to a nearby town, where he thrusts himself into the midst of a local wedding and, with a violent promise of marriage, seduces the intended bride. As the duquesa and the fishergirl appear at court to complain to the king, the seducer returns to Sevilla, and chancing upon the tomb of the Comendador, with a show of bravado seizes the stone statue by the beard and invites it to dine with him that night, which explains the second part of the play’s title: convidado de piedra (guest of stone). To his astonishment, even though he has had a table set as his part of the bargain, the statue appears, eats, then invites the seducer to dine the following night in its chapel, on which they shake hands. Although the seducer notes a certain unearthly quality in the handshake, his pundonor obligates him to keep the appointment. At the conclusion of the meal, which has consisted of scorpions, vipers and wine of bile and vinegar, the statue extends its hand, which is taken, whereupon host and guest sink down amid sound and fury into the fires of hell.

  Thus appears for the first time in the theater Don Juan Tenorio, hero-villain of demonic proportions. Imagine the reincarnations he is to have. In France, Molière (1665) and Corneille (1677) will produce plays on his life, while at a later date Mérimée, Dumas and De Musset will base stories on his legend. In Italy there will be several versions, the best being Goldoni’s (1730), In England, Shadwell (1676) will construct a play on the subject, which Purcell (1676) will use as the basis for an opera, and Byron (1819) will borrow the theme for his major poem. In Germany three distinguished musical versions will appear: Gluck (1760), Mozart (1787) and Richard Strauss (1899). In Spain the recensions will be numerous, until in 1844 a dramatist of whom we shall speak later will construct of the legend a play which will become Spain’s national drama, a kind of Hamlet and Faust combined.

  I cannot recommend too highly the original version of this legend. It was written by an ingratiating friar, Tirso de Molina, nom de plume of Gabriel Téllez (15717–1648), thought to be the illegitimate son of some noble family and the author of four hundred plays, of which nearly ninety are extant
. In many ways Friar Tirso’s account of Don Juan excels anything that followed, even Mozart’s Don Giovanni, because it is a hard, clean, unsentimental play with terrific impact. It is realism ahead of its time; ironically, it was to serve as the source of much romanticism. The scenes move rapidly and with a grand fatality; the character of the seducer develops properly and those about him are well differentiated; and the device of the marble statue is used with stunning effectiveness. The style of writing is most attractive, a lean statement not over-burdened with simile but filled with salty observation. One matter is of particular importance: although this original version was written by a friar, it does not, like some of the later accounts, end in an orgy of religious reconciliation. Don Juan dies a cynical, tough rogue. At the final banquet with his stone host he dares retribution to overtake him:

  ‘What do you call this dish, Sir?’

  ‘Scorpions and vipers. These are our foods. Aren’t you eating?’

  ‘I’d eat it if it were all the asps in hell.’

  His only concession comes in his next to last speech, and it was on this that the later versions built their scenes of redemption: ‘Then let me call someone to confess and absolve me.’ To which the statue replies, ‘You have thought of it too late.’

  Tirso’s version has a classic dignity. It was apparently written about the time of Shakespeare’s death (1616) and shows Tirso to have been rather less inventive and poetic than his English contemporary, but in the use of characters from everyday life he is as good. Actually, the form of the play and its development remind one of Racine and Corneille, who followed him. It makes a strong impression on stage, the flow of scenery and costume being particularly attractive, but it requires a strong actor to carry the role of Don Juan. He cannot burlesque it or play it as a dandy; he must be more like the resolute hero of a western movie than a fancy gentleman in lace and ruffles. He is, indeed, the archetype of the hero-villain and should be played as such.