CHAPTER III—TOWN LIFE IN SPAIN
Toledo, the Type of the Spanish City—Its Architectural Monuments—The Intermingling of Arab and Christian Art—Granada—The Alhambra—Cordova—The Great Mosque—Seville, the City of Pleasure—The Special Character of the Streets—The Cafés and Shops—The Typical Andalusian—The Parks—The Sevillanas—Spanish Courtship—The Houses of Seville—The Patios—The Home-life of the Sevillians—Spanish Hospitality.
Toledo has kept, perhaps, more than any city in Spain its mediæval aspect, combining in its buildings of so many civilizations that here remain together; churches, convents, mosques, Gothic walls and ornaments, Moorish houses and steep passages—everywhere the Moorish design is evident—and a great Christian cathedral—much of what is most typical of the genuine Spanish civilization. I know of no city that can give a more poignant emotion than Toledo.
A great town, set on its rough and elevated rock of granite in the midst of the blue Sierra, closely ringed by the deep brown water of the Tajo, it is like no other city in the world. The national character, strong and aloof, passionate and brilliant, and the nation’s history, are here epitomized before you. And coming to the city, as the stranger does, from Madrid, blatant, noisy, and modern, you will feel transplanted back into an older world.
Your first impression is of something extraordinarily austere. You seem to have passed into silence and an almost painful absence of life.
Toledo has remained as the Moors built it, a tortuous network of cobbled alleys, as was most fitting in a city built upon rock, scorched by sun in summer, and in winter swept with icy winds. The tall houses, rising in straight upward lines like an arrangement of flat walls, are almost all windowless on the side next to the street; where there is a window it is barred and closely latticed, and the high gates are studded with iron bosses and seem to forbid an entrance. No sight of the tree-shaded court is given, as at Seville and Cordova. No one appears to go in and out of these doors. Every house has the aspect of a prison; they all look as if they had histories.
There is the same absence of bustling modern life in the streets. In the Calle del Comercio there are shops, but the wares are simple, having an old-world air; only specially interesting is that of Alvarez, the best maker of damascene. Even in the Zocodover, the centre of the city’s business, all is sedate. You will see the water-carriers driving their mules up the steep streets from the vega, a peasant whose beast is laden with bright-coloured fruits and vegetables, or a group of goats that supply the milk for the city. Yet often the streets seem deserted. Only the companies of beggar children, who clamour incessantly around you with their strange cry, “Un caukie sou! Un caukie sou!” remind you of the life hidden in the sleeping city.
Romance lives in Toledo. How many scenes and how many figures famous in Spain’s history are recalled to our memory here. In no other city are there the same number of architectural monuments. It is the chief centre of the two great elements of Spanish civilization, the Christian and the Arab, which makes it the place where the native art can best be studied. Its cathedral and churches are furnished with the most perfect examples of the industrial arts that have been produced in the Peninsula. El Greco, who adopted Toledo as his home, expresses in his pictures, which are one of the great possessions of the city, the Toledan spirit, which is the spirit of Spain. The churches are the museums and picture-galleries of the city; each one has its special appeal—its precious mosaics, its ironwork, its glass windows, its cloisters, its tombs, its beautiful carvings, or its pictures.
In Toledo you understand the part that religion has taken in the history of the country. You can hardly walk for five minutes in any direction without coming upon some church; they stand at the corner of almost every square, many are embedded between the brown walls of the houses.