Catalonia is the Spain of to-day and of the future. There are those who believe that Catalonia contains all the elements essential to the complete regeneration of Spain, and that she will raise the whole country to her industrial level. But the old county of Barcelona has a glorious and stirring past, as well as a promising future. Her history goes back to the days of Charlemagne, and has to tell of merchant princes and of hazardous commercial enterprise reminding one of the Italian maritime republics. The Balearic Islands, one of which (Minorca) was long an English possession, constitute one of the most flourishing provinces of the Kingdom. Delightful as a place of sojourn or residence, Majorca and her sister isles reveal many and conspicuous traces of that prehistoric race which once offered bloody sacrifices to the Sun on all the shores of the Inland Sea.
THE ESCORIAL
A HISTORICAL AND DESCRIPTIVE ACCOUNT OF THE SPANISH ROYAL PALACE, MONASTERY AND MAUSOLEUM. WITH PLANS AND 278 PLATES
The Royal Palace, Monastery, and Mausoleum of El Escorial, which rears its gaunt, grey walls in one of the bleakest and most impossible districts in the whole of Spain, was erected to commemorate a victory over the French in 1557. It was occupied and pillaged by the French two-and-a-half centuries later, and twice it has been greatly diminished by fire; but it remains to-day, not only the incarnate expression of the fanatic religious character and political genius of Philip II., but the greatest mass of wrought granite which exists on earth, the leviathan of architecture, the eighth wonder of the world.
UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME
GALICIA
THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE. A HISTORICAL AND DESCRIPTIVE ACCOUNT. ILLUSTRATED
The old kingdom of Galicia may not inaptly be termed the Wales of Spain. Its people approximate closely to the old Celtic type, with a large admixture of the Teutonic blood of that strange forgotten tribe, the Suevi, who held sway here for two centuries. Though every traveller in Spain has met the sturdy patient Gallegos in the capacity of porters, servants, and workers, few trouble to visit their country, a pleasant land of green hills, deep valleys smiling lakes, brawling streams and long fjords like gulfs.
ROYAL PALACES OF SPAIN