Iberia

by James A. Michener

  All ferias end, but few so mournfully as Pamplona’s. At nightfall after the last bullfight, is over, the bands that were once so gay pass slowly through the plaza and the narrow streets playing dirges, and when they reach the mournful wail which concludes their requiem, those marching throw themselves prostrate in the street, and with their foreheads beating the stones, cry in the night,

  ‘Poor me, poor me! How sad am I.

  Now the Feria of San Fermín

  Has ended. Woe is me.’

  A city is in lamentation, and well it should be, for there are not many things like San Fermín.

  X

  BARCELONA

  To travel across Spain and finally to reach Barcelona is like drinking a respectable red wine and finishing up with a bottle of champagne. For Barcelona is an exhilarating city, replete with challenging aspects. It is not only the political capital of the north, where one can best evaluate the problem of regional separatism in Spain, expecially Catalan, but it is also the intellectual capital of the country, with a fascinating collection of museums. It is a world almost to itself, a unique metropolis bound more to the Mediterranean than to the mountains, more to France than to Africa.

  I approached Barcelona in a leisurely and almost ideal way. One morning I awoke in the Parador de San Francisco inside Granada’s Alhambra. This is generally held to be Spain’s choicest parador if one is concerned with history and architecture, for it is very old and its cloistered patio is exceptional. After a farewell visit to the tinsel-and-stucco buildings of the Alhambra and a final look at Manuel de Falla’s carmen, my wife and I drove out past the Torre Bermeja and up onto the plateau that would lead us eastward to the Mediterranean. At the last curve we looked back at the beautiful Muslim city and at the cathedral where my four kings lay, Fernando, Isabel, Felipe, Juana, and like the Moor we saw no more.

  It was autumn as we drove north and harvesting was under way. Golden grain, russet fruits, red grapes and crimson peppers were being gathered and this part of Andalucía looked positively rich, so rich that I remembered the explanation as to why Granada produced poor wine: ‘Her grapes have not suffered enough.’ In the good fields we saw that morning there had been little suffering.

  Before long I was surprised to come upon the famous village of Guadix, for I had supposed that it lay farther south. During the final siege of Granada in 1491 a crucial victory had been gained here by the Christians, but memory of it has pretty much been submerged by the fame of the town’s cave dwellings, and these are something to see. Set in a lunar landscape of bleak hills and rocky pinnacles the houses of Guadix are dug into the faces of the hills, and when chimneys are piped up through the solid rock so that fires can be lit, are quite comfortable. This style of architecture has been adopted in many different countries, most notably in central Turkey, but at Guadix there is a difference, because the doorways into the caves have been handsomely plastered and decorated with red tiles, so that they look like the entrances to churches or villas of some importance. They have been rewhitewashed once or twice a year for six or seven centuries, so that like the house of Núñez de Balboa in Jerez de los Caballeros, they are now encrusted in a kind of man-made rock of soft and delicate outline. To see Guadix in the afternoon sun, with its pinnacles dark brown like burnished gold and its cave entrances stark white, is to see a dream village more appropriate for goblins and giants than for human beings.

  The reason I wanted to see Guadix had nothing to do with its architecture, handsome though that was. This was the pueblo in which Alarcón had located his short novel El sombrero de tres picos, and as I looked at the miserable economic level at which the villagers lived, I could hear the music which Falla had composed for this work and I could visualize the four leading actors in the rustic comedy. This was the house of the hardworking miller and over there was the fly-stained office of the lecherous corregidor (one who corrects, hence magistrate) who had conceived an evil passion for the miller’s wife. This grapevine could be the one from which she plucked the grapes used for bedeviling the corregidor, and that little stream is probably the one into which he tumbled while pursuing her. And the biggest of the houses, not attached to any cave, would pretty surely have been the corregidor’s, where the miller went to enjoy himself with the corregidor’s wife while the latter was having no luck with the miller’s wife. Seeing the supposed setting of the ballet gave me a better understanding of Falla’s music, for he caught the color and sound of a Spanish village. Two orchestral suites have been excerpted from the ballet. The first summarizes the dance of the miller’s wife, the magistrate and the episode of the grapes, and is not outstanding; the second gives us the dance of the neighbors, the miller’s farruca and the final dance, and is probably the best work Falla ever did. I have never been able to account for the discrepancy in the quality between the two suites, but I have come to prize the second as fit to stand beside Stravinsky’s Petrouchka or Prokofiev’s Love for Three Oranges.

  Beyond Guadix we came to that series of Andalusian villages perched on the sides of hills where life is as bleak and unrewarding as anywhere in Europe. The bulk of the people are illiterate and are intended to be kept that way by their landed masters. Life is even more miserable than in the villages of Extremadura, because here there is less hope. The earthen floor, the solitary garment with patch upon patch upon patch, the early marriage and the early death, these are the marks of rural Andalucía. It is no wonder that whole villages have emigrated. Where do they go? Listen to the litany of rural Spain as I heard it from an Andalusian.

  ‘A good many men from this village … Germany. When they go they promise, “We’ll come back. I won’t forget you, Prudencia.” But we never see them again.’

  ‘Do they find Catholic girls? In Germany?’

  ‘They come back to Spain. But not to this dump.’

  ‘Where do they go?’

  ‘Where would any sensible man go? Barcelona.’

  Whenever a man from Andalucía, fed up with his miserable lot, pronounced the word Barcelona it was as if he were uttering a benediction. ‘That whole village beyond the hill, they all went to Barcelona. You can plow the main street and plant your grapes, because they won’t be back.’

  ‘Is life in Barcelona that good?’ I asked.

  ‘No. It’s very hard. But it’s a life.’ Here the Andalusian made the gestures which I had seen before. He rubbed the cloth of his shirt to signify that in Barcelona men could afford clothing. And with his fingers he put imaginary food in his mouth, and this required no interpretation. Wherever I went in rural Andalucía, I encountered these signs.

  I sought out an intellectual from the area, living of course in a different part of the country, and he said, ‘My region is the heart and soul of Spain. Everything good comes from Andalucía, and believe me when I say that all of us who live in exile do so with a sigh. Just as our hard fields make great fighting bulls, so they make fighting men. If I thought I’d never again see Andalucía, I don’t think I could live.’

  ‘Then why do so many leave?’

  ‘Two harsh reasons. The landed families own Andalucía and they’ve sworn that nothing down there will ever change. For them the system is good, and for them it will continue. The second reason, the Church. In this city you’ve met liberal priests. In Barcelona they have tremendous priests, willing to fight even the police on behalf of students and ordinary people. But in Andalucía the Church has one last stronghold of the old system, when peasants behaved and listened to their betters. So down there the Church is an agency of repression. It preaches a kind of life that flourished five hundred years ago … when things were supposed to be good.’

  My informant paused and said, ‘Actually, a thousand years ago when Moors occupied the region life was probably better than it is now. A thousand years and there’s been no progress. Have you ever seen a true back-of-the-mountain Andalusian village?’

  ‘I’ve seen Guadix.’

  He laughed. ‘That’s a metropolis. They have buses a
nd a cinema. They have no money but they do have spirit. No, I mean the really forlorn Andalucía. You haven’t seen it and you can’t know.’

  I said, ‘I went into the Sierra Nevada south of Granada. Well back. I’ve seen.’

  He reflected on this for a moment and said, ‘Even that’s the good part. I’m speaking of the truly bleak areas over toward Murcia. Spend a week in one of those villages, as I have, and you’ll understand why people from Andalucía flock to Barcelona.’

  Intellectual Spain.

  ‘Why not Madrid?’

  ‘That’s a subtle problem. In the minds of these people Madrid is merely an extension of what they already have. Landed power. The Church. Feudalism intensified. But Barcelona, with its nearness to France and its fronting on the Mediterranean, is a complete break. In Madrid there’s not much hope for an Andalusian peasant. In Barcelona all things are possible. And when you get to Barcelona and see the tremendous number of Andalusians who have emigrated there, look at how poorly they live. Really, until they get established they live like swine. But not one ever leaves to return home. Because in Barcelona there is hope.’

  I asked what would happen to Andalucía if the exodus continued, and he said, ‘The landed families and the Church will win their battle. They’ll keep it just as it was five hundred years ago. Unless …’

  As so often happens in conversations with Spaniards, he hesitated, considered his words carefully, then plunged ahead. ‘If at Franco’s death there is trouble, everyone expects it to come in Madrid and Barcelona, especially the latter. It won’t. Well, in a way it will. There’ll be some rioting and temporary disturbances, but they’ll be easily handled. But if the atheistic peasants of Andalucía rise, watch out. Because they will not be easily put down.’

  He suggested that when the turnover came I forget Madrid and Barcelona, for they would provide only flashy headlines. ‘Keep your eye on what happens in Andalucía, for that will be the powder keg. If it can be controlled, all will be controlled.’

  I asked, ‘But haven’t the more durable spirits gone off to Germany and Barcelona?’

  ‘They have. That’s why the powers in control down there have never tried to halt emigration. They want the bolder men to get out. But conditions are so poor that even the not-so-bold may feel they have to do something. Watch Andalucía.’

  At Guadix, I had faced two major decisions and with a lack of courage had in each case chosen the easier way out. Repeatedly I had been told, ‘You cannot understand modern Spain unless you look into the Gibraltar Question. And you must see what’s happening in Torremolinos.’ Had I intended doing either, my last chance would have been to head south at Guadix, but I ignored the turnoff and continued due east. Concerning the Gibraltar Question, which monopolized Spanish newspapers during my last three visits, I did not feel qualified to judge. In 1704 the English had occupied the rock during a war in which Spain performed poorly. On July 13, 1713, a provision of the Treaty of Utrecht confirmed English possession. Since then the promontory had constituted a key link in the life line that bound England to Egypt, India and Australia. The Treaty of Utrecht contained many provisions, two of which England had apparently broken during the years when Spain was in no condition to challenge her: According to the treaty, England was allowed to occupy only the area immediately adjacent to the rock and was obligated to respect a demilitarized zone established between English and Spanish holdings, which was easy to comply with in an age of ships, but which could not be respected in an age of aviation when British forces stationed at Gibraltar required landing fields that could be built only in the demilitarized zone; in this respect the Treaty of Utrecht was unquestionably violated. Out of respect for Spanish sensibilities, England also undertook never to bring into Gibraltar any Jews or Muslims, but during the years of indolence she had allowed several Jews to take up residence and many Muslims, and had thus once more violated the treaty.

  It was interesting to see how Spain enlisted support from jurists in all parts of the world, especially Latin America, to condemn England for having unilaterally abrogated a treaty 253 years old; but in addition to this legalistic approach there was the more persuasive one that colonialism as represented by England’s holding on to Gibraltar when Spain wanted it back was outmoded. Again a storm of support was whipped up in the Latin countries, and barely a day went by without my reading in the papers some statement from a dignitary in Lima or Caracas condemning Great Britain as a colonial tyrant. This argument was somewhat blunted by the fact that Spain herself held tightly to a chain of colonies in Africa, and I was often amazed at the prospect of Spain’s lambasting Great Britain for doing only what Spain was doing; but just before I left the peninsula for the last time, the Spanish government cut that moral Gordian Knot: ‘We will give all our colonies self-government as soon as they are ready for it.’

  This question of self-government is a tricky one, because if a plebiscite were held in Gibraltar, which the Spanish often call El Peñon (the Large Rock), there is good reason to believe that at least seventy percent of the residents would elect to remain under some kind of British rule. To the Spanish this is an infuriating statistic, but I never felt that it was determinative. In the long run Gibraltar ought to be Spanish and to keep it in any other status is anachronistic. I suppose that most sensible Britons feel the same way and that in time some kind of modus vivendi will be worked out, perhaps fifteen or twenty years hence, when tempers have cooled a bit. In the meantime, two factors operate to keep Spain from pressing the matter as diligently as she seems entitled to. First, an open breach with Great Britain would necessitate an interruption of the profitable sherry trade with London, which would quickly throw Andalucía into bankruptcy. Second, Spain as a newly baptized tourist country could not afford a belligerency which would frighten away even one season’s flow of tourist income. As a matter of fact, I thought that both Spain and Great Britain were behaving well. One day the Spanish press, in obedience to government orders, stirred up such a frenzy of attack against London that minor anti-British riots broke out in several cities, with the stoning of British automobiles and the menacing of British consulates. Later I learned that the Spanish government had been frightened by the implications, and during the next week the press carried no more inflammatory nonsense. Instead there was a warm article about England’s queen, Isabel II, and a laudatory review of a London football team.

  (When the plebiscite was held, on September 10, 1967, those living in Gibraltar voted as follows:

  Citizens eligible to vote 12,672

  Number who actually voted 12,247

  Spoiled ballots 65

  Number preferring to return to Spain 44

  Number preferring staying with Great Britain 12,138

  Percentage favoring Great Britain 99.6)

  The Gibraltar Question has produced an accidental side effect that is unfortunate. Spain is one of the few nations in the world which has refused to recognize the State of Israel. Three reasons have been given: the government’s reluctance to exacerbate Muslim feeling since Spain’s colonies contain mostly Muslim inhabitants; the understandable desire of a Catholic country to have the holy city of Jerusalem governed by an international commission to which the Pope would appoint a large proportion of the representatives, rather than to have it as it long was, half in Muslim hands, half in Jewish; and the inconsistency that would result if Spain were to recognize a Jewish state while invoking against England the anti-Jewish terms of the Treaty of Utrecht. I suppose the last reason is the operative one. It is ironic that Spain should refuse this gesture to the Jews, because Generalísimo Franco is highly regarded by Jews; during the worst days of World War II, when pressures from Hitler were at their heaviest, Franco refused to issue anti-Jewish edicts and instead provided a sanctuary, never violated, for Jews who managed to make it to Spain. Many thousands of Jews owe their lives to Franco, and this is not forgotten.

  On the other hand, it is not uncommon to find in unexpected quarters stubborn anti-Jewish
propaganda. For example, Agustín Serrano de Haro’s Yo soy español (I am a Spaniard), a text in primary history, was written by a government inspector of primary education, endorsed by Church and lay authorities, and widely used since publication in 1944. One of its chapters dealt with still another case of supposed ritual murder by Jews of a Christian child, this time seven-year-old Domingo del Val de Zaragoza, who in the thirteenth century was supposed to have been crucified, thus attaining local sainthood. Serrano’s inflammatory text was accompanied by three horrendous illustrations, the last of which showed the hideous Jews catching the child’s blood in goblets. When I first saw the book the chapter ended with this tag line, ‘So now you know, children, what Jews are like.’ After disenchantment with Nazi Germany set in, this line was dropped, and when in the spring of 1967 I saw the twenty-sixth edition of the text, I found that the whole chapter had been eliminated.

  As for Torremolinos, I was visited in Pamplona by a delightful Californian who runs a bar in the beach town, and he said, ‘Michener, you would be false to every canon of good reporting if you chickened out on Torremolinos. It’s the living most … the capital de gustibus … the new wave … the perpetual party. It’s Sweden-on-the-Sand. It’s the Lourdes of LSD. It’s the only spot in Spain where the Guardia Civil doesn’t run things, and you must see it.’