In the country hamlets the stranger must be prepared to meet discomfort. One of the trials will be hunger. In the fondas of the Basque provinces and in the smaller towns the fare is ample, and as a rule well cooked. But the peasants of Central and Southern Spain are the most frugal people, who subsist on a diet that would be refused by the poorest workers in England. For the stranger the peasants do their utmost, but the diet is limited to eggs, leathery, quite tasteless beef, hard stale bread, and thin wine. The cooking is always indifferent. The first meal of the day consists of a cup of chocolate or coffee, often without milk, and a lump of dry bread. There is no butter, and no milk except goat’s milk, and, strange as it seems in this fertile land, vegetables and fruit are always scarce in the country villages. The universal dish is garbanzos, a large dried pea, which is cooked with garlic as a flavour.
We spent several months fishing in these districts, and, although sometimes we fared tolerably well, more often we had to be content with indifferent and inadequate meals. But for the sake of experience the stranger can endure discomfort with fortitude.
There are numerous sport-giving rivers in all parts of Spain, which possess all the qualities for the production of fish-life. Such rivers as the Sil and Minho contain trout as big as any in Europe. The fishing is free, except for a licence costing about three shillings. There can be no doubt that with proper cultivation these rivers might become a fisherman’s paradise in the course of a few years. But a complete revision of the ley de pesca—fishing law—is necessary. Rivers are not stocked, and trout hatcheries are almost unknown. The poacher is everywhere, using snares, spears, and the deadly dynamite. Thousands of small fish are scooped out of the small pools of the tributaries with pole-nets during dry seasons. But, on the other hand, Spain is, happily, almost free, except in the mining districts of the north, from poisoned and contaminated waters. There are thousands of miles of beautiful rivers with no factories, works, or big cities within many leagues of their lengths. Then, the fish in the Spanish rivers are splendidly prolific. Trout teem in many rivers, where the deep pools baffle the poachers, who devote their attention to the shallows and tributaries. Salmon are found in many rivers; shad or sábalos, escalos—a kind of cross between a chub and a dace—barbel, bogas, and other coarse fish, and eels, are plentiful. The barbel is different from the barbel of England, being a handsomer fish and not so coarse; it is more golden in colour, and the scales are less thick. The beautiful silvery sábalos are caught in sunk nets, whose opening is concealed by a green bough which looks like water-weed, and so deceives the travelling fish. The sábalos will not rise to any bait. They vary from 4 pounds to 12 pounds in weight, and are an excellent fish to eat, resembling the salmon.
In all parts of Spain there are native anglers. The tackle they use is of the rudest description—a rod made of maize stalks, with a hazel switch for the top, coarse casts, and flies clumsy and big. But they are all keen, and many of them are clever fishermen. At Materosa, a small hamlet on the wild Sil, some leagues from the town of Ponferrada, the peasants gain their living by fishing with the rod for trout, which they send to the market at Madrid.
I recall Estanislao, a chico who fished with a great bamboo rod, which he looked too small to handle.
“You are also a fisherman?”
“Yes, señora; I have fished all my life, and my father before me.”
This chico was a good angler. Standing on a great boulder, he cast with a loud swishing noise across the river, letting his dozen flies swim on the rough water. At each cast the weight of his great rod nearly threw him into the whirling current. But he caught more fish than we did.