Galicia, the Switzerland of Spain

by Annette M. B. Meakin

Second Woman: “Clearly.”

First Woman: “And he felt dreadfully lonely so far away from all his people. Yes, he found that what was bad here is bad there, and so he made up his mind to come back here again.”

Second Woman: “Of course.”

First Woman: “Of course.”

Among five thousand Gallegan peasants it would be difficult to find one who was not a proprietor—who did not own a little cottage and a little plot of ground. One result of this is that Socialists are also extremely rare in Galicia. In Andalusia, on the contrary, the land is all owned by a few rich landlords, and that province consequently swarms with Socialists. Many Italians also emigrate to South America, and there are spots there where the population is an equal mixture of Italians and Spaniards. This is particularly the case in Ecuador, where the mixture of the two peoples has already produced a new dialect, and the inhabitants are unconscious that the words they use are drawn from two languages. As I have said, in every town I visited in Galicia, without an exception, I saw notices on the street walls tempting the people to emigrate. During a drive from Noya to Santiago we passed on the road more than two hundred youths who had come down from the mountain villages to seek for work; each carried a hoe across his shoulder, and on it was slung a handkerchief containing his worldly goods. Here and there we saw a young man resting beneath some shady tree, a sort of Dick Whittington who, if he does not find work in Galicia, will emigrate, make a fortune, and perhaps return to buy ground and settle in Galicia, and become eventually a public benefactor to his native land. But, as a poor woman in the neighbourhood of Pontevedra told me, though they do make money quicker in South America than in Galicia, a large proportion of them suffer from the change of climate, and, what is more, they too often acquire the expensive habits and extravagant ways which counterbalance other advantages. “Many who have come back,” the woman told me, “say that, after all, there is no country in the world like Spain, for health and good climate and productiveness of the soil.”

Although the climate and soil of Galicia are the best in Spain, it is mainly from Galicia that the emigration takes place. A small proportion of Spaniards from south of the Peninsula emigrate annually to Morocco, where most of them keep the idle habits of their old home, standing about at street corners from morning to night. Some travellers attribute the innate laziness of the Spaniards to the effect of their brilliant sunshine. Even the energetic Borrow, when he was in Seville, wrote: “I lived in the greatest retirement during the whole time that I passed at Seville, spending the greater part of each day in study, or in that half-dreaming state of inactivity which is the natural effect of the influence of a warm climate.”

It has sometimes been stated that the Spaniard is too proud a fellow to work hard in his own country among his own people, but that once he finds himself in a new country in the midst of strangers he will work as well as any fellow in the world. However that may be, it is undoubtedly a fact that the Gallegan wakes up wonderfully in South America, and when he returns home in comfortable circumstances he is loud in his expressions of dissatisfaction at the stagnation and lack of progress so patent in Galicia. Ford, writing in the fifties of the nineteenth century, said, with regard to emigration: “They have ascribed the depopulation of Estremadura (the province to the south of Galicia) to the swarm of colonist adventurers and emigrants who departed from this province of Cortes and Pizarro to seek for fortune in the new world of gold and silver; and have attributed the similar want of inhabitants in Andalusia to the similar outpourings from Cadiz which, with Seville, engrossed the traffic of the Americas. But colonisation never thins a vigorous, well-conditioned mother-state—witness the rapid and daily increase of population in our own island, which, like Tyre of old, is ever sending forth her outpouring myriads.... The real permanent and standing cause of Spain’s thinly peopled state, want of cultivation, and abomination of desolation, is bad government, civil and religious.... But Spain, if the anecdote her children love to tell be true, will never be able to remove the incubus of this fertile origin of every evil. When Ferdinand III., captured Seville and died, being a saint he escaped purgatory, and Santiago (St. James) presented him to the Virgin, who forthwith desired him to ask any favours for his beloved Spain. The monarch petitioned for oil, wine, and corn—conceded;—for sunny skies, brave men, and pretty women—allowed;—for cigars, relics, garlic, and bulls—by all means;—for a good government;—‘Nay, nay,’ said the Virgin, ‘that never can be granted; for, were it bestowed, not an angel would remain a day longer in heaven.’ ”

Galicia is a province where railways have preceded roads, and where automobiles have preceded railways. There are towns in Galicia that are decaying for want of roads by which they can carry on commerce with their neighbours. All the water used in Coruña has to be carried by women from the fountains, and the town waterworks are only now in course of construction.

Aguiar speaks of the strong nomadic instinct of the ancient Celts as being inherited by the Gallegan people—and certainly the Irish Celts are addicted to emigration. As regards education—of the various provinces in Spain, Galicia can boast of having the best educated lower classes. Recently, when soldiers were being levied for the Spanish army, it was found that ninety per cent. of the Gallegans could read, that five per cent. could read but not write, and five could do neither; whereas in Castille, fifty per cent. could read and write, and fifty could do neither; and in Andalusia only ten per cent. could read and write, while ninety could do neither.

Yet almost every writer on Galicia from Strabo onward speaks of the stupidity of its inhabitants! Yes, the idea that the Gallegans are a stupid people is quite classic. “The Romans,” says Señor Eladio Oviedo, “thought them stupid because they would not submit, and were the stubbornest of all the barbarians that Rome attempted to conquer. Even Lope de Vega repeated this classic error—and we have it direct from the classic writers of the sixteenth century.” Aguiar indignantly refutes the belief, which was very widespread all over Spain in his day. He is indignant with Morales for saying that one reason why the body of St. James was lost for seven hundred years was the crass stupidity of the Gallegans—calling it an atrocious insult, and remarking that the page in question ought to be publicly burned.