Galicia, the Switzerland of Spain

by Annette M. B. Meakin

Aguiar relates the following story which was current all over Spain in 1836, as an example of Gallegan dulness. “A sick man died, and the doctor who had been attending him having pronounced him to be dead, he was carried by his comrades in an open coffin to the cemetery. On the way the corpse moved and showed unmistakable signs of life, then, to the astonishment of the coffin bearers, sat up and cried, ‘Good heavens, where on earth are you taking me?’

“ ‘To the cemetery,’ replied his friends.

“ ‘But if I am not dead?’ cried the poor fellow.

“ ‘You must be dead, because the doctor says so,’ was the reply, and on went the procession.”

There appeared in the year 1902 a little book on the subject of Gallegan emigration by Señor Valdes Failde, with a preface by Don Antonio Cerviño, a Canon of Tuy, whose acquaintance I made during my stay in that town. Both these gentlemen are confident that the emigration which is going on is seriously debilitating the country, and if not checked will be disastrous for the State. “Galicia,” says Cerviño, “is losing every year the healthiest and most robust of her children.”

The sad spectacle which so many of the Gallegan villages offer to those who see below the surface, and have an eye to the future, is indeed a sad one. The fields are worked by women, the carts are driven by women, the seed is sown by women,—everything, in short, is done by women. But where are the men? They have gone to seek their fortunes on the other side of the Atlantic. Some say it is a spirit of adventure inherent in their Celtic blood which carries the men away; others, we have seen, put it down to the density of the population. But if you ask the women, they will tell you, as they told me, that it is the multitude of taxes.

Certainly all these things have to do with the increase of emigration, but there are other causes which must also receive our consideration. The people do not know how to deal with what they have, they are wofully ignorant of the most elementary rules of agriculture, and they have no one to teach them. If Galicia were a province of Japan, it would soon have a thriving agricultural college in its midst, and the men, however poor, would have a chance of learning what they need so much to know. There would be a free library from which books could be borrowed by all who could read, and fresh hope and energy would stir the people’s minds.

Señor Failde complains of the absolute disunion of agriculture from the home industries, of the evil effect of usury, of the immorality of the people, and of the excessive division of territorial property. He suggests that usury might be suppressed by law, and urges that the taxes on food stuffs should be removed. He also wishes to see those heartless agents, who, to fill their own pockets, tempt the people to emigrate prosecuted and punished. Further, he would like to see wholesome literature that would show the people the evils of emigration widely distributed among them. This writer says that density of population is not one of the causes of Gallegan emigration, for the population of Galicia is not dense: this he proceeds to prove by statistics. Finally he tells us that we shall find in a volume of poems by Rosalia Castro, called Follas Novas, a masterly study of the principal causes of Gallegan emigration.

The potato disease in 1845 led to the emigration of a million Irish to the United States within the space of five years. Potatoes are also a staple food in Galicia. Yet when they were first introduced, the people, in their ignorance, refused point blank to grow them. There is hardly a family in Galicia, however poor, that does not possess at least one cow. When the animal begins to grow old they fatten it with maize and potatoes, and sell it to the butcher. The extreme humidity of the climate produces such abundant pasture that the keep of cattle amounts to very little. The people of Galicia have been cattle breeders from time immemorial,—in fact, this was until the last century the popular industry of the province, and many hundred head of cattle were annually exported from Coruña to London. The Count of Campomanes, in a lecture on the subject in the thirties of last century, spoke of the Gallegans as model cattle breeders.[196] Why has this industry died out? Failde attributes its decline to the fact that the United States now export such fabulous quantities of fresh, salted, and tinned meat into Great Britain, and sell them at the lowest possible prices, that British industries of that class are no longer a paying concern. It is more than probable that if the British Government were to put a small tax on all American imports of that nature, England would again preserve her own beef, and be glad once more to trade in live cattle with Galicia. Why should Chicago workmen pickle beef for English tables, while Englishmen parade our streets for want of employment, and Gallegan cattle breeders emigrate to South America to evade starvation? Portugal has recently put a prohibitive tax of fourteen pesetas per head on all cattle imported into that country from Spain, and a period of renewed depression has resulted in Galicia, for even half that sum would exclude the poor Gallegan peasants from the market.

In central Galicia it is customary for all the peasants to breed mules. At the age of a year and a half they used, formerly, to sell the female for about 12,000 reals, and the male for half that price. But mules are now being introduced from France, and they are also being extensively bred in Andalusia and Estremadura, so that this industry has been killed in Galicia.