CHAPTER IV
The “season of the baths”—Furnished apartments without beds—The amenities of the Balneario—Sea views at a discount—Bathing costumes: flounces and frills—The force of example—Happy swimmers.
The “season of the baths,” as the summer holidays are here called, is a very serious business indeed. In the fashionable seaside resorts such as San Sebastian, Santander, Malaga, etc., it is possible to get a comfortably furnished villa or flat for a few weeks, though only at a ruinous cost; but in the smaller places it was until lately difficult to get any accommodation at all outside of the Balneario or Hotel for Bathers, unless one took a so-called furnished house and sent the missing necessaries from one’s own home by carrier or train; for the furnishing in such houses generally consisted mainly of more or less rickety chairs.
Personal luggage, of course, goes with the traveller, but things which do not come into that category, and they are many, must be booked and paid for separately. What exactly constitutes personal luggage varies a good deal with the taste and fancy of the booking-clerk. At one station, for instance, they flatly refused to take my jamugas (a folding donkey saddle described on p. 66), and at another an obliging porter tied them on to my suit-case and they went through without difficulty. But speaking generally, nothing but portmanteaus, bags, and such like are admitted, with one notable exception. About bedding there is never any trouble. A mattress for each member of the party, with its pillows, sheets, and blankets, will all go as personal luggage, though, as the limit of weight is only 60 lbs. per head, you may have to pay a considerable sum for excess. You can also book your bed and bedding (which it is just as well to take with you to a “furnished house” at any of the smaller seaside places) together with other immediate necessaries, by grande vitesse, when it is supposed to travel by the same train as yourself, and to be accessible immediately on arrival. But if there happens to be a crowd at the departure station, it is as likely as not that the things booked by grande vitesse will be left behind.
This happened to some Spanish acquaintances of mine one summer. They had booked everything except the children’s lunch and such trifles as they could take in their hands, and they arrived at the village where they and we were to spend the holidays late at night and dead tired, without any luggage at all. The neighbours set to work and improvised beds for the smallest children, and the mothers, aunts, and sisters sat in rocking-chairs all night.
“What else is to be done?” they said philosophically; “this sort of thing always happens if you go to the baths in the fashionable season, when everybody wants to be there at once.”
None of them were at all cross or depressed, although they were very grateful when we provided a mattress or two for the tired babies to be put to bed on.
Travellers who want to see the Spanish bathing season in full swing may put up at the Balneario with which every little seaside resort is provided. But they must be prepared to get no sleep or rest as long as they stay there, for the noise is inconceivable. There will be anything from fifty to two hundred men, women, and children—but chiefly children—of all ages, and all agog to make the most of the seven, fourteen, or twenty-one days of bathing prescribed by the family physician. For be it known that we don’t bathe as we please in Spain, but under medical orders and strictly for the good of our health, and many people believe that all the virtue in salt water would be lost did they take one bath too many or too few. And from the moment they wake in the morning until the last frequenter of the hotel bar goes to bed some time in the small hours, the din of voices and the clatter of feet on the brick floors never ceases for one instant.
Most Spaniards have extraordinarily loud voices. Of course it is usual in any country to shout at a foreigner under the impression that he will understand better if you deafen him to begin with. But in Spain it is not only the foreigner who is bawled at, for Spaniards all shout at each other in the bosoms of their families to such a degree that when I first came to live here I got the impression that they were continually quarrelling. Men and women alike have this unpleasant habit, and although many of them are aware what a noise they make and remark that it is a bad custom, they seem constitutionally incapable of lowering their voices.