Dinner, or Comida, is served about mid-day; the nominal time varies, but it is always half an{12} hour late. In many districts, however, this title is transferred to the supper, and then the luncheon is known as Almuerzo—Déjeuner. It is a very substantial banquet of some half-dozen courses, inaugurated (in strictly classical fashion) by an egg. Next comes a dish of haricot beans, or chick peas, or rice garnished with pimientos, closely pursued by another containing boiled meat, bacon, and sausages, all which you may tackle separately or simultaneously, according to your greatness of soul. Then comes a stew—the celebrated Olla Podrida; and then (to the great astonishment of the stranger) the belated fish. Fish seems to have methods of penetrating to all spots which are accessible by railway. Hake is the general stand-by, but in the mountains you get most excellent little trout. The solid portion of the meal is concluded by a “biftek” and salad, but there is still an appendix in case you are not satisfied yet. On Sundays, in superior Fondas you will get caramel pudding, and always and everywhere cheese, accompanied by a sort of quince jelly known as membrillo, a very excellent institution indeed. Finally (again classically) comes the fruit; but this is usually rather inferior, considering how very cheap and excellent it is in the markets outside. Wine is,{13} of course, supplied ad lib. to every diner, and water in porous earthenware bottles which evaporation keeps deliciously cool. Olives are eaten steadily at all intervals; and if you have long to wait between courses, you fill up the intervals with cigarettes! The evening meal—cena—is generally very similar to the mid-day, except that soup takes the place of the egg.
The cooking is by no means deserving of all the strictures that have been showered upon it; for most nations know how to cook their own dishes, and only come seriously to grief when they try to imitate French. The dreaded garlic is used but sparingly; oil is a much more dominating feature. But then oil has a double debt to pay, because Spaniards make no butter. At all events the food is plentiful, and “St Bernard’s sauce” will cover a multitude of deficiencies; for appetite is a blessing that is seldom lacking to the traveller in Spain!
After dinner, the Café. And a Spanish café is a most noteworthy assemblage. It is comparatively empty in the evenings, for the Spaniard’s homing instincts are much more strongly developed than the Frenchman’s, and he seldom quits his house and his family circle after dark. But in the early afternoon it is thronged to repletion with all{14} sorts and conditions of customers, from the general in command of the garrison to the ragged vine-dresser and muleteer. Here they sit through the long, sultry hours of siesta-tide in a roomful of shuttered twilight, chattering like a mill-wheel in flood-time, sipping their coffee and aniseed brandy,[1] and steadily consuming cigarettes. It often seems mild dissipation for such very truculent-looking desperadoes. Fancy an English navvy regaling his carnal appetites on black coffee and dominoes! Not but that dominoes (as played in a Spanish café) is an exciting, even an athletic, pastime. It entails alarming vociferation; and every piece that you play must be slammed down on the marble table top with all the force at your command. The domino volleys echo through the café like musketry on a field-day on Salisbury Plain, and if you feel at all dubious as to your direction when you chance to be seeking that edifice, you may readily succeed in locating it by listening in the street for the din.
But the heat of the day is now passing, and the traveller must answer the call. His road is at{15} least more level than hitherto; for the coast hills westward of Laredo are gradually losing their mountainous character, and over their heads to the southward we begin to catch glimpses of the great rock walls of the Cantabrian Sierras, which grow ever higher and grander as we near the Asturian march. The environs of Santander are again disfigured by quarrying; and the soil, where disturbed, is of a deep red ferruginous hue. Truly “a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills thou mayest dig brass”; though “rivers and fountains of water” are not quite so common as we might desire. Santander itself, however, we will avoid altogether. Like Bilbao, it is quite a modern city; and the direct road through the mountain glens behind it brings us down to the sea again at Torrelavega by a very much pleasanter line.
Meanwhile we pursued our career to an intermittent orchestral accompaniment—a tune in two keys, like M‘Alpin’s drone and small pipes, but far more powerful and piercing than the most brazen-lunged piper could blow. Occasionally we met the musician. He is only an ordinary ox-cart—a pair of wheels, a pole, and a plank or two, actuated by a pair of sleepy kine.
In Galicia the yoke is fastened round the necks{16} of the oxen; but more generally it is bound with thongs to their horns and finished off with a bonnet of goat-skin, or in Asturias with a fleecy busby of most imposing size. The wheels have often only a single spoke, or sometimes three arranged in the form of the letter H. Altogether it is probably the simplest, slowest, and most vociferous affair on wheels.
For the amount of lamentation that can be extracted from one dry axle is a thing that is scarcely credible even when it is heard. The natives encourage it. They have one theory that it pleases the oxen, and another (far more probable) that it scares the Fiend. But at any rate it has no apparent effect upon the Spanish teamster, who lounges along in front waving his goad like a drum-major’s baton; or sleeps—yes, sleeps—on the summit of his yelling load. Verily the man who first invented sleep must have been a waggoner! This evening, as we were crossing the ridge between two parallel valleys, our ears were saluted by the unmistakable long-drawn scream of an impatient locomotive. Our map showed no railway, however; and we were just beginning to plume ourselves on an important geographical discovery, when we caught sight of a single ox-cart—200 feet{17} below and half a mile away! The hill sloped away straight and smooth before us, and we fled! We felt no shame at the time; yet perhaps it was rather faint-hearted to shirk the chance of a personal interview with the most musical axle in the world.
But the bicyclist has one grievance in Spain which is not so easily avoided as ox-carts, and it is about the end of the second day that the iron of it begins to enter his soul. Thenceforward for ever he cherishes a deadly and undying rancour against the Spanish dogs. We had been partly prepared for the infliction beforehand. The captain had mentioned them, and had talked of ammonia pistols; but we spurned the suggestion with humane horror. We knew quite well that all foreign dogs were brutes, but we were confident in our own benignity and scornful of “methods of barbarism.” And in these noble sentiments we persisted—for about a day and a half. Next morning we were awakened out of our beauty sleep by the yellings of some miserable cur in the Fonda patio;—“Hurrah! there’s a dog getting hurt,” was our simultaneous comment; and ere we recrossed the frontier we had registered a grim resolve that next time we would bring revolvers,{18} and strew our path with carcases from Fuenterrabia to Cadiz. So much for the deterioration of moral fibre under the strain of Spanish dog.
Well, we are not the first (nor the last) whose amiability has been ruined by “dogs barking at us as we pass by”; and when every brute in the countryside, from the toy mongrel to the wolf-hound as big as an ass-colt, dances yelling and snapping at your heels for half a mile together, it is not entirely surprising that patience should wear thin. Of course there are stones. The Guadarrama district in particular produces a beautiful white quartzose,—hard and heavy, with many sharp angles,—an excellent article to throw at a dog. But what is a pocketful among so many? Besides, you often miss them, and never hurt them enough. Truly I could feel no sure confidence in anything short of a loaded revolver. But only a very even-tempered man could trust himself with that ultima ratio within reach of his fingers; and I cherish a rooted objection to “going heeled” in a civilised land. Perhaps a lion-tamer’s whip with a loaded butt and a bullet at the end of the lash may prove effective enough to compromise upon.
Meanwhile there is some silver lining to the cloud. There are already some convertites among{19} the dogs of Spain. The majority pour themselves upon the cyclist, clamorous and open-mouthed, like the demons in Malebolge; but a remnant clap their tails between their legs and make a bee-line for the horizon. We humbly hope that our own modest assiduity will have effected a small but perceptible increase in the latter class.