by Laurie Lee
Across the bay stood rich Gibraltar. Across the Straits the free port of Tangiers. For the forbidden goods they had to offer, Spain was starved. So the yachts and fishing-boats ran to and fro on the dark nights, and Algeciras was their clearing-house. Watches, fountain-pens, nylons, cigarettes, sweets, cocoa and canned meats: here, in this town, I could buy them any day, untaxed and hot from the smugglers’ hands.
The organization was smooth but implacable, and the right form of bribe had always to be observed. One morning, as I was dressing, I heard the crack of a rifle, and looking out of the window saw a young man spread-eagled on the pavement below. ‘A contrabandista,’ said the chambermaid, shaking out the sheets. But he was only a poor workman, a lone hand who had failed to obey the rules. So the green-cloaked policemen dumped his body in a cart and wheeled him like rubbish away.
But in crowded Algeciras hundreds of other young men stood around in the streets all day. They were not fishermen, or labourers, and their pockets were stuffed with American cigarettes. Every morning an army of thousands – cooks and washerwomen, ostlers, dockers, roadmen, waiters, gardeners and guides – went across to Gibraltar to work. Every evening back they came, bulging like clowns with their loot. So they and their wives drank rich cocoa on cold nights, and their daughters wore stockings of silk, and the children sometimes ate chocolate. Nowhere else in Spain were these things either seen or tasted, at least not by the poor.
Gibraltar, that juicy pear-drop of rock hanging from dry Spain’s southern tip, was captured by the British some two and a half centuries ago. Many of the original Spanish inhabitants fled to the mainland, and most of them settled in this town. Never, never did they cease to grieve their loss and shame. And yet . . .
‘Do you know what the people of Algeciras are called?’ asked Ramón, handing me some chewing-gum. ‘Los Especiales – the favoured ones. They talk a lot about “our Gibraltar” and “the Spanish Rock”. They cry and stick out their teeth. But I’ll tell you something.’ He paused, and laid a finger along his nose. ‘They wouldn’t have it back for the world, you know. It would be the ruin of them.’
2. Choirs and Bulls - Seville
In an afternoon of gale and storm we left Algeciras and took the motor-bus for Seville, a hundred miles to the north. Africa and the Straits had disappeared in a driving whirl of cloud and the sky was the colour of octopus ink. Our road was a bad one, narrow, cratered and steep, and it took us straight up into the Sierra de los Gazules, a dark region of craggy forests where no birds sing.
From a distance these mountains look like a herd of driven animals, lean, diseased and beaten to the bone. Near at hand they revealed a shuttered, oppressed world, particularly so this stormy day, under its heavy sky. There was something about the streaming rocks and wet, lead-coloured trees that gave one a sense of unnatural freedoms, of a desolate secret life. Indeed, as one expected, it was a place of bandits; and we had two Civil Guards, fully armed, riding with us for our protection.
These two did not impress us, however. They were green, sick-looking youths and they rode with an air of misery. As we bumped up the rocky forest road they crouched low and peered anxiously out of the windows, while yellow home-made cigarettes hung wet from their loose lips. They were here on sufferance of course, and they knew it. For the bandits were as indigenous to these parts as the wild boar and stag, and when they struck they did so with the fine assurance of those who are indulging an ancient privilege. Moreover, their ranks had been stiffened of late by an influx of escaped prisoners and political outlaws. Oh, yes, they were bad men, said a neighbour, hugging his fat lap. Along this very road, this very winter, several unhappy travellers had been shamefully murdered. It was a natural peril of the mountains. But the señores were not to fear; the Civil Guards were valiant, and the bandits never attacked foreigners anyway, it was not their custom.
On this occasion, somewhat to our disappointment, we were not attacked at all. It was not bandit weather; and we did not see so much as a living creature in all those mountains. When at last we came out of them and descended into the plain, the Civil Guards said how lucky we were, and we said how lucky they were, and in an atmosphere of mutual congratulation they left us and took another bus back to the coast.
The storm here left us also. As neat as a ruled line drawn across the sky, the black clouds ended and radiant blue began. We came to Alcalá de los Gazules, a terraced town of bright white houses hung with red flowers and roofed with gold. White pigeons floated like thistledown in the sky above, and sunshine came off the walls with the force of an electric flare. We stopped here, and sat by the roadside, drinking wine and screwing up our eyes.
Later we began to cross the plain that rolls gently towards the Guadalquivir. It was brown as a camel and smelt of fine herbs. There were walled farms here and there, and wooden crosses by the roadside; herds of black bulls roamed slowly in bronze pastures, a castle stood up sharply from the cone of a dead volcano, and above, in the wide sky, two white flamingos flew.
The day set fair, and the Sierras receded like a distant battle, dropping low on the distant horizon in a torment of rock and cloud. Our bus driver was a cautious man and maintained a humble speed. We bucked through craters, and swerved round wandering cattle, and by late afternoon approached the fortress town of Medina Sidonia whose Duke once led a fleet to capture Britain. The town stood now, stark on its weathered rock, wrecked like a galleon decaying in the sun. We circled it slowly, and picked up a few survivors, and by dusk had arrived among the ornate villas and pungent wine smells of Jerez de la Frontera.
The worst part of our journey was over. We had come a long and brutish road, taking over four hours to travel sixty miles. Now, in the dark, we ran smoothly up the Guadalquivir valley. The driver switched on Radio Sevilla, and sang to it, and by nine o’clock we arrived among the spread lights of that city.
We entered Seville in style, leaving the bus station through a double row of porters, cab-drivers and hotel-touts all drawn up to greet us. As we walked down between their ranks we were assailed by cries of welcome, admiration, promises and advice, names of hotels and details of food and beds.
We lost our nerve, and picked a man at random, and drove off with him to a hotel of some class, though moderately priced. After supper we went out into the streets, which were still light and gay, and full of people, in spite of the late hour. Old men sat in the wide windows of their clubs watching the girls go by. Taverns and bars threw open their doors to us, and the windows of the shops were packed with pretty emblems of the city – tambourines, castanets, embroidered shawls, flamenco dolls, holy images and glittering chandeliers.
The effect of such tinselled knick-knacks, displayed with such bright assurance, acts as an immediate aphrodisiac upon the senses. The effervescence in the streets, the floating music, the flowers and towers and azulejos and orientalisms are part of it too. In no time the city has one in thrall. It is all part of the special femininity of Seville, a mixture of gaiety and languor. For among so much that is harsh and puritan in this country, Seville is set apart like a mistress, pampered and adored. It is the heart of Andalusia, and of the Andalusians. It is the first charge on their purse and passions. In spite of war, hunger, decay and cruelty, ways are still found to preserve the softer bloom of this city, its charm and professional alegria Not only in its own province, but throughout all Spain, men turn to Seville as a symbol; it is the psyche of their genius, the coil that regenerates their sharpest pleasures and instincts. The miner from the Asturias and the fisherman from Cartagena, though never having set foot in it, will speak of the city with jealousy and love. So Seville remains, favoured and sensual, exuding from the banks of its golden river a miasma of perpetual excitement, compounded of those appetites that are most particularly Spanish – chivalry, bloodshed, poetry and religious mortification.
Thus one sees, often in the meanest streets, the ritual furniture that builds up the myth, the cracked walls dressed with green-leafed flowers, the watered pa
tios whispering with tiny fountains, the writhing Christs and brooding Virgins lit by perpetual lamps. One sees the ragged schoolgirls dancing in gutters, intense and sexual, weaving their hands like snakes; sees the doomed bull-fighter kneeling at Mass, hears the death-shout in the Ring, and bursts of superb singing in the night.
Seville of sweet wines and bitter oranges, of dandy horsemen bearing their girls to the parks, of fantastic villas and radiant whores, of finery, filth and interminable fiesta centred around the huge dead-weight of the cathedral: this is the city where, more than in any other, one may bite on the air and taste the multitudinous flavours of Spain – acid, sugary, intoxicating, sickening, but flavours which, above all in a synthetic world, are real as nowhere else.
The next day, after a breakfast of coffee and caraway buns, we walked through a litter of leaves and orange blossom to a street market near the University. Here, laid out along the sidewalks in a delirium of rust, was all the precious debris of a people who never throw anything away. Un-American, nonproductive, mechanical innocents that they are, they would treasure the last thread of a boot-lace. And here, arranged like jewels, in formal patterns on the ground, were old nails, bent screws, broken files, battered buckets, tangled wire, rods of iron and bunches of huge medieval keys. Nothing was despised and everything had a price. Sharp-eyed customers raked and sorted, tapped and bit, and rang things on the ground. And as much shrewd argument went into a purchase here as one might see in the diamond markets of Amsterdam.
Farther on were stalls of slightly better-class goods: plaster dogs, single boots, oil-lamps, singing birds, flowers and gramophones with horns. There was also a large collection of Madrid-made hand-mirrors which rippled one’s image like running water. From all this happy rubbish I bought a rose for twopence, and for five shillings a small bronze Christ, cadaverous, pain-wracked and unbelievably old.
Leaving the market we walked by the Moorish Wall and got caught up in a demonstration of students who were bound for the Town Hall to demand a free holiday. They were dressed, for some reason, in black sixteenth-century doublets and hose, and they carried heraldic banners. But it was a bright sweet day, fresh from a night of rain, so we hired an open carriage and drove to the Park of María Luisa. Seedy, fly-blown, with creaking wheels – but what elegance such motion has. Except for being borne in a hand-litter I cannot imagine a better. The long-maned pony gently trotted, the coachman flicked a languid whip, and smoothly we went through the Delicious Gardens, while blossoming trees floated past our heads like slow, green-scented clouds.
The park was formal yet flouncy, like the dress of an Edwardian beauty. The air was soft and spring-like. Children in large hats and long white pinafores bowled their grave hoops among the rose trees. Black-stockinged girls bent over pools, poking at goldfish with the stems of lilies. And opulent mammas, ripe in black satin, drowsed at their ease on the blue-tiled benches. It was a landscape by Renoir or Steer, an end-of-the-century dream; and as we clopped our way along, smelling the oranges and roses and passing the lacy girls posed like old postcards among the flower-beds, I felt an unnatural sense of distinction, almost as though I had invented the horse.
So passed the gentle, slumberous afternoon, stopping for photographs or buying flowers, rolling down avenues of hornbeam and eucalyptus, through tunnels of fresh green, half-dozing to the pony’s sighs and the coachman’s sonorous snores. Then we came at last to the river-bank, woke up the coachman, paid him off, and set out on foot for Triana.
Triana is Seville’s Roman suburb and lies just across the water. It rises flush from the river’s edge, a crumbling group of lemon-coloured hovels battered with poverty and age. It is a working place, a suburb of potters, boot-menders and carpenters, with an élite of free-moving mysteriously purposed gypsies. Here are made the shining azulejos which face with blue so many Andalusian villas. Here are made also the painted chairs and glazed images that furnish them. And here are born many of those penniless but inspired exponents of the popular Spanish arts – incomparable guitarists and dancers, feverish poets and small-boned, hot-eyed boys who go early to the bulls, and whose hunger, valour and excesses lead them to swift, unnatural deaths.
We walked among the riverside huts and dwellings, saw an old lady sitting in a doorway chewing dried cod, saw a girl of five dancing solemnly under an old wall, saw a boy fighting a dog with goat horns tied to its head, and heard from the door of a potter’s shop the verses of a song which threw up the word ‘Triana’ over and over again, like a firework.
As we stood on the bridge, in the midst of the muddy river, the sun burnt down slow into the rigging of orange ships, waiting the winter harvest. Seville harbour – only a few hundred yards of dock set on the banks of a slow river, fifty miles from the sea, yet once the greatest harbour in the world, and still, in the legends of man, the most important. Columbus, Pizarro and Fernando Magellan, the Santa María and the little Vitoria – from here they sailed to find a new world, or to be the first in all history to encircle the globe.
On our way back from Triana, up the street of the Catholic Kings, we looked for a tavern to rest ourselves, and found one called ‘Pepito’. It was a lucky chance, for the proprietor was a prodigious epicure, loose-tongued and free-handed. His name was Antonio. He was a bald, youngish man, with a smooth face, shining eyes, stubby ring-covered fingers, and the greasy plumpness that comes from standing long hours behind a bar eating and drinking and waiting for customers. It was his own bar, and he was his own master, and the days were his own to make as pleasant as possible. Seldom, then, did he keep his ringed fingers from picking the food, his fat lips from tasting the many wines of the house. He was an enthusiast, an obsessive, and as soon as we arrived he began to offer us, without charge, glasses of wine from every barrel in the place.
‘Approve this,’ he would say, banging a new one down on the counter and drawing off a little one for himself. Then, as one drank, he would step back a couple of paces, and stand, head on one side, like a painter observing his canvas. ‘You like it? Solera buena. You’re right. It’s no good. Approve this, then. Oloroso. Very rich. There you are.’ And bang came another glass, golden as honey, but set down with such force that half of it jumped out on to the floor. So it went on. For two hours we approved. And for two hours he joined us, glass for glass, sipping holily, watching our eyes while we drank, and telling the history of the wine.
‘This is a miracle. Approve the colour. With this you could suckle a baby. So kind it is. With this you could wash the dead and they’d resurrect themselves. Is stupendous, eh?’
And with every new glass Antonio would bawl to his wife, who was hidden behind a screen, and bid her fry some fresh tit-bit to eat with the wine. Great barrels were piled along the walls, chalked in red with their redolent names: Coñac, Manzanilla, Fino, Tinto, Amontillada, Blanca la Casa, Solera and Especial. We had a glass from each barrel, and from the best, several. If one was not emptied before the next was offered it was tossed airily into the street. And with every glass came some new delicious morsel, cooked by the invisible wife; fried fish, fried birds, kidneys, prawns, chopped pork, octopus, beans and sausage.
Antonio was the fat host of a golden age, persuasive, open-fisted, and delighted with our appetites. He cheated himself frivolously for the pleasure of seeing us drink. He talked all the time, and showed us photographs of himself going right back to his mother’s breast. And from what we could see the years had hardly changed him at all.
Bewitched by this hospitality, we returned to Antonio another night. We had learned that it was his daughter’s birthday, and we brought her cakes. When I placed the parcel on the counter he struck his head with his hand.
‘I pollute the house!’ he cried, rolling his eyes. ‘What sympathy. What grace.’ He bawled to his wife, who immediately began frying. Then he shouted upstairs to his daughter, Maria, to wash her face and put on fresh ribbons and come down and not dishonour him.
‘I pollute the house,’ he cried again, looking at t
he cakes in amazement.
His daughter appeared, beautiful and dignified as an infanta, and shook our hands. It was her twelfth birthday. She talked to us solemnly about geography and arithmetic, while her father ripped out the corks of special bottles, prised open tins of ham and tunny fish, sent out for cigars, and spread the whole feast before us. And thus we gorged together till after midnight. Antonio was in a frenzy of pleasure, drunk with generosity, riotous and noisy as though at a wedding. Maria remained cool, courtly, soft spoken and rather prim. But the wife, endlessly frying behind the screen, never appeared at all.
Most cities in the world have a particular centre of gravity to which the steps of inhabitants and visitors naturally turn. In London, I suppose, it is Piccadilly. In Seville, without doubt, it is the Cathedral – largest and most non-committal Gothic structure in all Christendom. It is also unlike any other I have ever seen. In contrast to the perpendicular sky-reaching fantasies of England and France, Seville Cathedral is flat and square, a study in the horizontal, almost in prostration, hugging the ground like an encrusted turtle, ponderous with age and veneration. I believe the style owes something to the infidel, for the cathedral was founded upon the site of the great mosque left behind by the Arabs. But within the quadrilateral plan imposed upon it the structure is sternly Gothic, a majestic vastness still humanized by those two surviving Islamic graces: the Court of the Oranges – a scented, shadowy garden – and the magnificent Giralda tower, golden, light and aerial, rising like a delicate rock plant from the heavy Gothic stone.
To this cathedral, on the morning of the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, we went early, and watched the cold red sun throwing stained-glass patterns on the walls. The great interior was a rouged twilight, where the fretted Choir, the candled images and the many gilded dim-lit chapels, presented to the eye the massed details of an intricate sanctity. Though early, the place was busy. The street doors swung continually, dark crowds came and went, small bells tinkled, and incense drifted among the pillars with the sharp blue smell of a winter forest. We saw an old woman on her knees, hobbling from chapel to chapel, intent on some crippling penance. Another held up a child to kiss a Madonna’s jewels. We were not in this, nor out of it, but stood like Christian ghosts. A notice, pinned to one of the main doors, caught my eye. It listed, in English, a few brusque rules of behaviour for Protestant tourists, and ended severely: ‘Visitors who do not respect these normas will be driven from the Municipal Temple!’