5: 1934: The Real Spain
<< 4: 1932: Barcelona || 6: 1934-1936: “The Black Two Years” >>
I graduated from Oxford in 1933, with a
record good enough for Christ Church to give me a graduate scholarship. I was widely
congratulated, but soon my faculty sponsors despaired of me. My field was France and
especially its relations with Spain, and I was expected to settle down in a library and
collect documentation for a book (not a dissertation, since in those days the doctoral
system was scorned as a German-American invention). Instead, I was deeply dissatisfied
with the exclusive study of old books, documents, and the history of Romance languages. I
was interested in the contemporary world, and I wanted to get to know more about the
reality of Europe. What I had in mind was what later became known as a language and area
program. At Stanford I was to establish Bolivar House and its program of Hispanic American
and Luso-Brazilian Studies, so my wanderings in Spain and similar ones later throughout
Latin America were excellent preparation.
What better means that cycling around the continent? So I
covered thousands of miles that way, always armed with the appropriate Baedeker. First, I
must complete my education by getting to know Germany and Italy. I had lived with a
German-speaking family in Metz, Lorraine, but I had
simply crossed the Rhine at Strasbourg. I arranged an exchange with a family in
Bayreuth, and I spent the summer of 1933 there. I saw the early days of the Nazi
government and have written an account of my
impressions, refuting some later accounts by younger people who had not had that
experience. From Bayreuth I cycled across the Alps to Venice and then back to France
through northern Italy and Switzerland. I was to return to Italy in the autumn of 1935, so
I got a first-hand acquaintance with Italian fascism, which I was able to compare with
Nazism.
I spent the academic year 1934 to 1935
studying at the Sorbonne under the historian Philippe Sagnac. He encouraged me to prepare
a doctorat d’état (not the shorter doctorat d’université which foreigners
usually did). I agreed, since at Oxford the doctorate was still belittled as producing
narrow specialists; my mentor, Professor Entwistle, was a great scholar, and it angered
him that in academic processions young, lesser scholars who had taken the newfangled D.
Phil marched ahead of him. I chose as the subject of my major thesis (the program required
two) relations between France and Spain in the eighteenth century. Little did I dream that
my research would be cut short by the Spanish Civil War and most of the materials lost.
After all these decades I have returned to the subject, or at least one aspect of it, in a
book which will appear about the same time as this one: L’Espagne et les Amériques vues de la France et de la Grande Bretagne.
In Paris among other things I studied
Russian at the Institute of Oriental Languages—Russian was so exotic then that it was
classified as an oriental language!. Again, my action was viewed as strange by my Oxford
mentors, but I was sure that Russia would gain in importance and with it the Russian
language. Knowledge of Russian made it possible for me to produce the twenty volumes of
the World Affairs Report devoted to the Soviet role in
world affairs.
Having received an Esme Howard
Scholarship to study at the Residencia de Estudiantes in Madrid, I set out from Paris by
bicycle in the spring of 1934. Along the way I looked up some leading Hispanists. At the
University of Poitiers, Jean Sarrailh received me in his home, dressed in the red pants of
the oyster fishermen of Arcachon, where he had bought them. He was beginning his
distinguished career as a Hispanist, his major work being The Enlightened Spain of the Second Half of the 18th
Century (Paris, 1954). He rose to become Rector of the University of Paris, perhaps
the most important educational job in France, since it controls the whole educational
system of the Paris region. I met him again at a conference in Mexico in the 50s. He was
coldly indignant because he came via New York, where the U.S. immigration officials barred
him because during World War II he had belonged to a resistance group which for a while
had been under communist control. Somehow he got to Mexico. With me he was as cordial as a
Rector can be, but the episode soured U.S.-French relations.
From Poitiers it was on to Bordeaux, a
beautiful city with a university which is an important center of Hispanic studies. In
retrospect I wish that I had made it my French base rather than Paris, a grim city which I
knew well. The great Hispanist there was Georges Cirot (1870-1940) In European scholarship
there is no sharp line between literature and history, and Cirot cultivated both. His
first great work (1904) was a study of the Jesuit Juan de Mariana (1537-1624), author of a
history of Spain which he wrote in Latin and later translated to Spanish. His courage was
demonstrated in his defense of Arias Montano, threatened by the Inquisition. Most
notorious is his De rege et regis institutione (1599)
in which he justified regicide in certain cases. The book was said to have inspired
Ravaillac, who killed Henri IV of France in 1610.
Among the many other works of Cirot
were studies of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews in Bordeaux who had fled into exile
because of the Inquisition. The essayist Michel de Montaigne is said to have been partly
of that origin. Cirot devoted much of his efforts to Spanish historiography, studying
primarily the centuries before Philip II. He is best remembered as a senior statesman of
Hispanic studies.
After cycling across the Landes, I entered Spain and began
my odyssey along its north coast, which was more rugged than I had imagined, and then down
through Portugal to Lisbon. It was an extraordinary experience in which I saw many
monuments. However, I will relate only those experiences which had some social or
historical significance.
The first, in the Basque country, was
my first meeting with a real anarchist. Not the dangerous kind, known as
anarcho-syndicalists, but the harmless kind. The first had been active in Barcelona,
throwing bombs and killing many people. The police repression was brutal. The harmless
kind had been led by Francisco Ferrer (1849-1909), who loved birds and would certainly not
have harmed one. I assume my Basque anarchist was of the harmless kind. He was a
simple-minded person who thought the world would be better off without governments. There
must be a connection between people like him and the Basque terrorists. The belief that
the world would be better without governments could transmute into the belief that they
must be destroyed. The Basque country is prosperous, the land of hard-headed bankers and
lusty eaters. It is difficult to understand how terrorists and anarchists would flourish
here. They may mostly be dropouts, like violent people in the prosperous United States.
I rode along the coast and then to
Guernica (Gernika in Basque), a small town which is the shrine of Basque nationalism. The
sacred symbol is an old oak tree. It was one of four places where the lords of Biscay came
to swear that they would respect local privileges (fueros).
Close by is the building where the Biscay Assembly met. In 1934 Guernica was just a sleepy
village. I stopped for a glass of wine and some food at a bar where the wine was kept in
large pigskins lined up behind the counter. Little did I imagine then that Guernica would
be hit by Nazi bombers during the Civil War on April 26, 1937 and become the symbol of
Franco’s barbarity. In reprisal for their resistance, Franco abolished the fueros of Vizcaya, Guipúzcoa and Alava, while
Navarre, the home of the pro-Franco requeté fighters,
was allowed to keep its. The memory of the destruction of Guernica has seared itself into
the minds of Basques and triggered the anti-Spanish violence which has wrecked so many
lives. Picasso’s notoriety ensured the fame of his wild painting
“Guernica.” It was just another Picasso nightmare, which originally had nothing
to do with Guernica. Apparently it began as a painting of a bullfight; hence the rearing
horse. Picasso, who was living in Paris, just gave it the name “Guernica” when
the Spanish republican government, which was sponsoring an exhibit there, asked him for an
anti-Franco painting.
Bilbao on the estuary of the Nervion
River is an uninteresting city, and I paused there only briefly. Then it was back to the
coast and westward to Laredo, located on the mouth of a bay facing Santoña. Both are
fishing villages, chasing after the same sardines. The two communities were engaged in a
nasty fight over fishing, as is quite common along the coasts of Spain. Since the creation
of the European Union, which now regulates fishing, these fights have become
internationalized. The sea, with its fluid boundaries, and the tangles of international
law, have involved Spain in fights as far away as Canada and La Réunion island in the
Indian Ocean.
From there it was on to Santander, an
attractive seaside town where there is a royal palace now used by the Menéndez y Pelayo
Summer School. Next came Santillana del Mar, a lovely colonial town located, as the name
indicates, on the sea. I should point out that, since I visited them, many old Spanish
cities were badly damaged during the Civil War and later restored with varying success.
Near Santillana are the famous caves of Altamira, discovered in 1879. Today they are
tourist attractions, with their seven galleries; the chamber with the bison ceiling
painting has been called the Sistine Chapel of Quartenary Art. When I was there in 1934
its importance was still not recognized. A simple peasant served as caretaker. While he
held a flashlight in his hand I crawled through the entrance and saw the prehistoric
paintings. It is only in the last decades that the importance of rock paintings has been
fully appreciated.
Then it was on westward to another
historical site, the shrine of Covadonga in Asturias., described as the cradle of the
Spanish monarchy. After defeating the Visigoths at the battle of Guadalete in 711, the
Muslims occupied the whole peninsula, except pockets like this area. Here a Visigothic
nobleman Pelayo and his group of followers organized a revolt. In 722 the emir of Cordoba
sent an army to wipe out the group, but it was roundly defeated. Pelayo’s followers
elected him king, and he set up his capital at Cangas de Onís, a few miles to the
northwest. The cave in Covadongs where Pelayo hid is now known as the Sacred Cave. It
houses a wooden statue of the Virgin, called “La Santina”. She is honored every
year on September 8. Nearby is the late 19th-century Basilica, before which
stands a statue of Pelayo, brandishing the Cross of Victory, the supposed original of
which is on display in the Cámara Santa of the Cathedral of Oviedo. Nearby is a museum
housing gifts to the Virgin, including a splendid crown with more than 1,000 diamonds.
Since Asturias is regarded as the cradle of Spain, the crown prince is known as the
Príncipe de Asturias.
Since Covadonga is the only part of
Spain not conquered by the Moors, when in 1934 Franco sent Moorish troops to put down the
rebellious miners of Asturias, the leftist slogan was “The Moors in Covadonga!”
and posters with this as the theme circulated widely. When I was there a few months
earlier, I had of course no idea of what was to happen. When an official delegation
visited the Hoover Institution in 1990, I mentioned the slogan, and it was clear that over
fifty years later there were still bitter memories.
Oviedo, a few miles to the west, is the
capital of Asturias. To the south of it are the coal mines in the Mieres area, the scene
of the 1934 uprising. In the heart of the old city stands the magnificent cathedral, which
was badly damaged then and again in 1937 during the Civil War. I was lucky to see it
before all this havoc. The cathedral is the pantheon of the Asturian kings, and its
treasures are too numerous to describe here.
The cathedral was especially
interesting to me because it was the focal point of one of my favorite novels, La Regenta (1884) by Leopoldo Alas (1852-1901). He
is generally known by his pen name, Clarín (the Bugle), an eccentric law professor formed
in the Krausist school described in the chapter on the intellectuals. His 1878 thesis on
“Law and Morality” reflected the Krausist preoccupation with morality in civic
life and its anticlerical conviction that the Catholic Church is insufferably corrupt. The
poor heroine, La Regenta (the wife of a judge) is coveted by her confessor, the Canon
Fermín de Paz, who spies on her with a telescope as she sits at home. The two fat volumes
of the novel are brilliantly written, so that the reader swallows the anticlerical message
without realizing it.
Life imitated art. I took an elevator
to the top of the tower to get a good view of the city and conversed with the operator. He
was an embittered electrician who had been unable to find a decent job. For him running
the elevator was professionally beneath him, but a job is a job. I asked him about life in
the cathedral, and he regaled me with stories about the jealousies among the canons. His
account made the novel come to life. A similar novel is La Catedral (1903) by Vicente Blasco Ibañez
(1867-1928), which describes in similar terms the Cathedral of Toledo, the primate see of
Spain. The thesis of these and similar novels is, to use the notorious words of Manuel
Azaña, “Spain has ceased to be Catholic.”
Ramón
Pérez de Ayala, the author of A.M.D.G. was also a native of Oviedo and a pupil and
disciple of Clarín. He studied with the Jesuits whom he ridiculed in his novel. He lacks
the wit of Clarín, and, as noted earlier, I found him personally unattractive.
It is appropriate here to tell an
experience in a village somewhere along this ride. It stood back from the road, but I had
to spend the night somewhere so I went there and found an inn opposite the church. I
joined the folks having dinner around a big table. Sitting at the head and orchestrating
the conversation was the loudly anticlerical village doctor, whose constantly played the
same old record denouncing the priest of the church across the street. The priest returned
the compliment by fulminating at him from the pulpit. When he asked me where I was from, I
replied “England.” He looked pleased and said “Ah! They hate the priests
there!” To judge his feelings I replied “Well, no longer. They are generally
respected.” His eyes narrowed, and he snarled “I thought England was a decent
country!”
From Asturias I went on to Galicia, a
Celtic microcosm in the northwest corner of Spain. It held a special interest for me
because of my research on its most famous author, Emilia Pardo Bazán, whose novels
describe a rural country dominated by caciques, rural
bosses, and priests. The first town was Mondoñedo, which I had never heard of. Galicia
prospered in the eighteenth century thanks to the whaling trade, and because of this
prosperity many romanesque churches were refurbished in the baroque style. This was true
of the cathedral of Mondoñedo, whose size amazed me. When I entered an old woman dressed
in the colorful attire of the region was praying with intense devotion, kneeling on the
stone floor and with her brazos en cruz, arms
stretched out to resemble Christ on the cross. She looked as though she were desperately
praying for help. I have never seen such piety in Spain, not even in Old Castile. Across
from the cathedral was a bookstore specializing in religious books. I talked with the
owner, who was pained by the anticlericalism of the republic. He was convinced that things
would change because the government did not realize the power of the Pope. The great
shrine of Santiago de Compostela is in Galicia, as is the port of El Ferrol, the
birthplace of pious dictator Francisco Franco, and for this reason known during his rule
as El Ferrol del Caudillo (of the Leader). My guess is that the bookstore owner was a
strong supporter of Franco.
Then it was on to Betanzos, about fifteen
miles from the port city of La Coruña (known to the British as Corunna). I spent the
night in a picturesque stone inn on the square, where women with wooden buckets on their
heads were taking turns getting water from the fountain in the middle of it. Presumably
their houses did not have running water. I
had supper in the inn, and chatted with the owner while she prepared the typical meal of
the region: fish and potatoes. When she asked where I was from, I replied
“England.” “Ah, so you are a North American!” “No,” I said,
from England.” She looked puzzled, but finally understood:” So, England and
North America are two different places?” “Yes.” “Ah, like Betanzos and
La Coruña!” —fifteen miles away. Swimming ancestrally in her head were memories
of the Armada, which sailed from La Coruña against England, of Drake, known in Spain as
the Dragon, who attacked La Coruña the following year, and of the Yankees, who the
Gallegos feared in 1898 were going to invade Galicia. Pardo Bazán reports that the people
there believed that Yankees had three rows of teeth, like sharks.
La Coruña is a large and attractive
port town, but it has little of historic interest, so my stop there was brief. So it was
on to Santiago, of enormous historical and religious significance. The cathedral has been
amply described in many books, with its baroque exterior and its massive Romanesque
interior. I will therefore dwell on an episode which has sociological interest. My great
problem from this point on was sleep. Every night there were fireworks honoring some
saint, the worst being June 19, the festival of the “Popular Saints,” Saint
Peter and Saint Paul, who for some reason are lumped together in Spain, and July 26, and
that of Saint James (Santiago), Usually these saints are celebrated with three nights of
fireworks, making sleep extremely difficult.
In Santiago I therefore sought out a
quiet hotel on a quiet street, and took a back room facing a courtyard. Scarcely had I
gone to sleep when a loud barking woke me. I looked down at the courtyard; the villain was
a huge dog. I went downstairs several times and told the clerk to stop the barking. Every
time he told me to go back to my room; he would take care of it. In the early morning I
went down again in a towering rage. The clerk blanched and said “The dog belongs to
the local cacique (boss) who lives next
door!” I understood: he would never confront the cacique. Everything I had read in Pardo Bazán
about caciques suddenly came to life.
From Santiago I went south to
Redondela; the port of Vigo was some distance to the west. I could not find a room; all
the hotels were full. On the street I passed a plump priest in a silky black cassock. I
told him my problem. “Come with me” he said and led me to a nearby noisy cafe.
When we entered there was silence. He said in an dominating tone: “There is a
stranger here who cannot find a room. Can any of you put him up?” A simple fellow
finally said he could. I thanked the priest and went to my host’s home. It was
simple; the family slept on the ground floor, next to the animals. I slept upstairs in a
small room lulled by the noise of the animals, while smoke from the fire without a proper
chimney choked me. Next day I thanked my host and gave him a fair amount. I wondered why
the priest, who must have had a nice parish house, could not have put me up himself. This
was a vision of the clericalism about which I had read so much.
The River Minho, the boundary with
Portugal, was just to the south. It is a charming country with beautiful cities and
monuments. Down the coast I went through Vila do Conde, with its horse-drawn street cars,
to Porto. It sits on the Douro, linked to smaller Vila Nova de Gaia on the opposite bank
by a large double-deck bridge built by Eiffel. I was still trying to find a quiet hotel,
so it occurred to me that I might find one across the bridge, at the entrance to which a
policeman stood. I could read but not speak Portuguese, so I explained to him my desire in
Spanish. He simply shrugged his shoulders and said in Portuguese “I do not speak
Spanish.” So, on a fiercely hot afternoon I crossed the bridge but searched in vain.
Hot, desperate, and bathed in sweat, I re-crossed the bridge and walked past the
policeman. Seeing my plight, he took pity on me and addressed me in good Spanish; he was
making the supreme sacrifice of speaking to me in the language of the historic oppressor.
He told me where there was a quiet hotel. I went there, and again took a back room.
Scarcely had I gone to sleep than there was a bang, bang, bang from the building opposite.
To my dismay, it continued all night. In the morning I could see into the window. It was
the post office, and the employees were vigorously canceling stamps. What did Shakespeare
say about sleep?
From Porto the road led me southward
through the ancient university city of Coimbra, to Pombal, famous as the home of
Portugal’s great eighteenth-century statesman, the Marquis of Pombal. In this little
town there was a jail like a store front, except that instead of a glass window there were
bars. As I passed, a desperately sad peasant woman stood inside, holding on to the bars
and looking out at the street. I tried to
console her, but, staring blankly into space, she said not a word.
Further south came the peace of
beautiful monastery of Batalha (Battle, site of the 1385 battle which secured
Portugal’s independence from Spain), whose founding was tied to England. Eleven miles
south is the huge Cistercian monastery of Alcobaça, one of the largest in the world.
Further south is another large monastery, Mafra, built by a work force which at times
numbered 45,000! The luxury and expense of these great monasteries expressed the piety for
which Portugal was famous, or infamous, since its notorious inquisition, whose building
can still be seen in Lisbon, gave the English language the expression auto da fé. Eighteenth century travel accounts
describe how these monasteries had become almost clubs for wealthy nobles. The earthquake
of 1755 shook both the buildings of Lisbon and the piety of the people, but these
monasteries to the north suffered little. Today they are museums and tourist attractions.
While I was examining the rare books in Mafra’s great library, a sharp rat-tat-tat
rent the air. The courtyard was used by soldiers for machine-gun practice. Was this an
extreme form of secularization or of the cooperation between church and state?
Through Cabo da Roca, the westernmost
point of continental Europe, and Cintra with its palaces, I went on to Lisbon on the
estuary of the Tagus. It is a charming city with a string of attractive suburbs.
Stretching along the shore almost as far as Cabo da Roca. Ever in search of quiet and
sleep, I took a room in a suburban hotel. I thankfully went to bed, only to be aroused by
a lusty cock in the yard below supposedly greeting the first glimmer of dawn, but in fact
determined to vent on me his hatred of humans. I sold my bicycle and took the train to
Madrid.
The line passes through Extremadura, a
poor and relatively uninteresting part of Spain, although many conquistadores came from
there, including Hernán Cortés, who was born in the now insignificant village of
Medellín. I visited it later, and there is naturally a local cult of Cortés, which
Madariaga’s biography of him boosted. In the village square there is a bronze statue
of the conquistador with plaques honoring his military victories in Mexico. Cortés
provides an excellent example of conflicting historical assessments. In Mexico he is the
official villain of Mexican history. When I was lecturing once in Mexico I asked the
students if he was a bad or a good man. All said he was a bad man, except one Catholic
girl, who said “Well, if he had not conquered Mexico, some one else would have.”
Another conquistador like Cortés! Their response exemplifies the stereotypes inculcated
by history textbooks; hence the fight over them in. many countries, notably Mexico.
Conversely, Mexican textbooks idealize the Indian Benito Juárez uncritically. As I write
this, official Mexico is celebrating the revolutionary holiday, November 20, with parades
and boring set speeches.
After Extremadura, it was a surprise to
enter suddenly the modern world of Madrid, which, unlike ancient Barcelona, is not the
natural center of a prosperous area, but rather a capital created, like Ankara or
Brasilia, for geopolitical reasons. Apart from the old town, it is really a modern city
built to the east of it, although the royal palace is to the west. The main square, which
separates and links the two, is named La Puerta del Sol—the sun gate, since from it
the rising sun could be seen. The main avenue, the Castellana, is comparable to the Champs
Elysées in Paris. It runs from north to south through the new district, which has
expanded northward. The Residencia de Estudiantes, which was to be my home, lies on an
elevation just east of the northern section, a most attractive location.
Madrid is a curious combination of the
old and the new. I once went to a bank to cash a check.
The clerk said my signature was no good. I angrily asked him why. Because, he said,
it does not have a rúbrica–a
wiggle under my name. I protested that I did not use a rúbrica. He
was firm; “Without a rúbrica I cannot cash
it.” So I wrote a wiggle under my name, and he cashed it immediately. Since then I
have kept the wiggle. This custom goes back to the times when few could write. Scribes would sign, and people would simply
add their personal rúbrica.
Habits from the colonial period which
have disappeared in Spain .survive in Spanish America. It affects speech. Just as “gotten” has disappeared in
England, but survives in the United States, so “vos” (you) has disappeared in
Spain but survives in Argentina. Mexico, is still spelled “México” in Mexico,
but is has become Méjico in Spain.
It affects customs too. Both Benito and
Porfirio Juárez were born in Oaxaca (now spelled “Oajaca” in Spain). I once
gave a Mexican a ride in my car there. To find out his historical viewpoint, I asked him
if he respected Juárez. Yes, he said, and raised his hat. Did he respect Díaz, I asked. Yes, he replied, and raised his
hat again. In the conversation, whenever I named either great man, he raised his hat. It
was comic to see him sitting in the care constantly raising his hat.I suddenly realized
that this was the old Spanish custom of raising one´s hat whenever one mentioned the
king. There was quite a protocol about this, the way one raised his hat being an
indication of rank.
What about bullfighting, a symbol of
old Spain? When I was in Spain, soccer, now a national passion, was unknown. It began to
lose official status under the Bourbon king, Charles III, who despised it. It was
also condemned by the Church, which forbade priests to attend. Franco tried to revive its
status, and the present monarchy does not wish to appear hostile to it.
I attended a bullfight. An esponáneo, a wannabe bullfighter, jumped into the
ring, infuriating the handsomely attired pro, who turned to throw him out of the ring. The
bull seized the opportunity, sneaked up behind the pro, and jabbed his horn into his seat,
causing great plain and making his pants drop. The bull died proud of his deft feat.
<< 4: 1932: Barcelona || 6: 1934-1936: “The Black Two Years” >>
