Getting to know Spain

COWARD-MCCANN, INC. NEW YORK © 1957, by COWARD-McCANN, INC. All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publishers. Published simultaneously in the Dominion of Canada by Longmans, Green & Company, Toronto.
The author wishes to acknowledge the assistance and hospitality of Direccion General del Turismo in all its offices in Spain, the Spanish State Tourist Department in New York, and Iberia Air Lines of Spain, without whose co-operation the gathering of much of the material and the personal experience reflected in this book would have been impossible. A majority of the pictures were drawn from photographs by Herb Kratovil, taken especially for this book.
New York, 1957
Dee Day
Editor of this series: Sabra Holbrook
Seventh Impression Library of Congress Catalog Number: 57-7427 MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA


You probably know that it was a Queen of Spain, Isabella, who made it possible for America to be discovered in 1492. It was an Italian sailor, Christopher Columbus, who first had the strange new idea that he could sail westward from Spain in order to reach the Far East. He came to Spain to tell people about his idea, and everybody he met thought he was crazy because they knew, or thought they knew, that the northern corner of Spain, jutting out into the Atlantic, was the very end of the world. Even the most daring sailors and fishermen wouldn't go very far from that shore for fear they would drop over the rim into nothingness.
But Queen Isabella didn't think Columbus was crazy. She took time to listen to him and decided she wanted to help him. She didn't have any money to buy ships for his expedition, so she ordered a little fishing village, Palos, to build three ships as a way of paying a fine they owed her. The fishermen of Palos knew how to build good, sturdy sailing vessels, and they soon had the three ships ready for Columbus and his brave sailors.