Spain, v. 1 (of 2)

by Edmondo De Amicis

before you know it you find yourself standing in the middle of the room with your hat on and the Guide in your hands.

Let us go, then, to enjoy Valladolid.

Alas! how changed from the time of Philip III.! The population, which was then above one hundred thousand, has dwindled to less than twenty thousand; in the principal streets there is a fair showing of university students and tourists on their way to Madrid; the other streets are dead. The city makes upon one the impression of a great abandoned palace, where one still sees traces of carving, gilding, and mosaic, and finds in some of the central rooms a few poor families which reflect by their melancholy life the vast solitude of the edifice.

There are many spacious squares, an old palace, houses in ruins, empty convents, long streets grass-grown and deserted; in short, all the appearances of a great city fallen into decay. The most beautiful part is the Plaza Mayor, a vast arena, encircled all around by a portico supported by heavy columns of bluish granite, behind which rise houses, all three stories in height. In front of the houses run three orders of terraces of great length, where it is said twenty-four thousand people can be conveniently seated. The portico extends along the two sides of a wide street which opens into the square, and here and in two or three other adjacent streets there is a great concourse of people. It was market-day: under the porticoes and in the square swarmed a crowd of country-folk, vegetable-sellers, and market-men, and, as they speak Castilian with admirable purity of expression and pronunciation at Valladolid, I began to stroll about among the baskets of lettuce and the piles of oranges, to catch as I might the bon-mots and the cadences of that most beautiful language.

Among other things I remember a curious proverb repeated by a woman who was vexed beyond endurance by a young bully. “Sabe Usted,” she said, planting herself before him, “lo que es que destruye al hombre?” (I stopped and pricked up my ears.) “Tres muchos y tres pocos: mucho hablar y poco saber; mucho gastar y poco tener; mucho presumir y nada valer.” (Do you know, sir, what it is that ruins a man? Three muckles and three mickles: much talking and little sense; much spending and little keeping; much presumption and no worth.)

It seemed to me that I could perceive a great difference between the voices of these people and those of the Catalans: here they were more liquid and silvery, and the gestures too were livelier and the expression of the faces more animated; but there was nothing remarkable about their features and complexion, and in their dress they differed very little from the peasants of Northern Italy.

It was in the square at Valladolid that it occurred to me for the first time that I had not seen a pipe since I entered Spain. The laboring-men, the peasants, the poor, all classes, smoke the cigarette, and it is ridiculous to see great strapping fellows, with long moustaches, going about with that little microscopic thing in their mouths, half hidden in their beards. And they are very careful to smoke it up to the very last particle of tobacco, until they have only a bit of smouldering ashes left on their lower lip, and they even cling to this as though it were a drop of liquor, and finally they spit out the ashes with the air of one who is making a sacrifice.

Something else occurred to me also—a fact which I often observed afterward as long as I remained in Spain: I never heard any whistling.

From the Plaza Mayor I passed on to the wide, cheerful Plaza of San Pablo, where is the ancient royal palace. The façade is not remarkable either for grandeur or beauty. I entered the doorway, and before I could feel a sense of admiration for the magnificence of the hall I felt only sadness at the sepulchral silence which reigned in it. Nothing else produces the impression made upon one by a cemetery so closely as does an abandoned castle, for there especially, to a greater extent than in other places, the contrast is very strong and sharp between the remembrance of what has been and the actual condition in which one finds it. Alas for the superb retinue of plumed cavaliers! Alas for the splendid feasts, the fervid enjoyment of a prosperity which seemed eternal! It is a novel pleasure—that of coughing a little in front of those hollow sepulchres, as invalids sometimes cough to test their strength, and of hearing the echo of your lusty voice, which assures you that you are young and hearty. On the inside of the palace there is a court of generous size surrounded by busts of the Roman emperors in demi-relief, a beautiful staircase, and wide galleries on the upper stories. I coughed and the echo answered, “What health!” and I went out comforted.