THE beggars of Spain are a most devout class. Piety is, with them, the form under which they conduct business; a shield, and a certificate of character. They walk the streets under the protection of the patron saint of the principal church in town, and they formally demand alms of you in the name of that saint. It is Religion that solicits you—the beggar’s own personality is not at all involved; and it is thus that the proud Spanish self-respect is saved from hurt.
The tourist who has not tarried in French towns, is, at first, astonished to behold women passing to and fro upon the streets with no head covering whatever. Hats and bonnets are rarely seen upon Spanish women of the lower and middle classes. Those who are street-venders sit bareheaded all day long in their chairs on the Plaza, wholly indifferent to the great heat and blinding dazzle of the Spanish sun. About Christmas, dozens of a “stands” spring up along the Plaza. It is at that season that the gypsy girls come in with their roasters and their bags of big foreign chestnuts; and they do a thriving business, for every good Spanish child expects roast chestnuts and salt at Christmas.
Many of the mountain families about Toledo keep small flocks of sheep—flocks that, instead of dotting a green landscape with peaceful white, as in America and Northern Europe, only darken the reddish-brown soil of Spain with a restless shading of a redder and a deeper hue. These brown sheep are herded daily down on the fenceless wastes. The shepherd-boys are usually attended by shepherd-dogs so enormous in size that the traveller often mistakes them for donkeys. They are sagacious, and do most of the herding, their masters devoting themselves to the guitar, the siesta, the cigarette, and the garlic pudding.
Toledo, more than any other Spanish city, abounds with interesting bits and noble examples of the old Moorish architecture, for the reason that it has not been rebuilt at all, and that few of its ruins have been restored, or even retouched. Color alone has changed. The city now is of the soft hue of a withered pomegranate. Turn where you will, your eye is delighted by an ornate façade, a carved gateway with its small reticent entrance door, a window with balcony and cross-bars, and everywhere there is the horseshoe arch with its beautiful curve. The old Alcazar is standing, though occupied as a Spanish arsenal, and on the height opposite is the ruin of a fine Moorish castle.
ONE of the best “small businesses” in a Spanish city, is that of the domestic water-supply. Those dealers who have no donkeys, convey it to their customers in long wheelbarrows constructed with a frame to receive and hold several jars securely. Stone jars, with wood stopples attached with a cord, are used, the carrying-jars, being emptied into larger jars in the water-cellars. The peasants have a poetic appellation for the soft, constant drip of the water from the old aqueducts: The sigh of the Moor.
With the Spaniard, as with the American, the turkey is a special Christmas luxury. But the tempting rows of dressed fowls common to our markets and groceries, are never to be seen. As the holiday season draws very close at hand, the mountain men come down into the city, driving before them their cackling, gobbling, lustrous-feathered flocks, bestowing upon them, of course, the usual daily allowance of blows which is meted out to the patient family donkey. These poultry dealers congregate upon the Plaza, where they smoke, and chaff, and dicker, keeping their droves in place with the whip; and the buyer shares in the capture of his flying, screaming, flapping purchase, in company with all the children on the street, for the turkey market is usually great fun for the Spanish youngster.
In the cold season, one of the morning sights of a Spanish town is the preparation of the big charcoal braziers outside the gates of the fine dwelling-houses. The coals are laid and lighted, and then the servant blows them with a large grass fan until the ashes are white, when he may consider that all deadly fumes are dissipated, and that it is safe to carry it within to the room it is to warm.
Nearly all the peasants in the near vicinity of cities are market gardeners on a small scale. They cultivate small plots, and whenever any crop is ripe, they load their donkey-panniers and go into the cities, where they sell from house to house. These vegetable-panniers have enormous pockets, and are woven of coarse, dyed grasses, in stripes and patterns of gaudy blue and red. When filled, they often cover and broaden the donkey’s back to such an extent that the lazy owner, determined to ride, must sit on the very last section of backbone. Some of the streets in Toledo are so narrow that the brick or stone walls of the buildings have been hewn and hollowed out at donkey-height, to allow the loaded panniers to pass. The buyers make their bargains from the windows, a sample vegetable being handed up for inspection.