My Spanish Year

by Ellen M. Whishaw

I sprang up and opened my door, wondering if Rosario had also overslept the appointed hour. There she was with a cup of coffee for me, smiling as brightly as ever, but her curly hair was ruffled and she had a generally dishevelled appearance. The diligence had not gone. Something was wrong with the wheels, or the harness, or the horses, or the driver, no one knew exactly what; but Rosario thought that the truth was probably that the driver wanted to do some business in the fair. Anyhow the diligence did not start, and Rosario and her boy had sat all night long in their chairs, with various other visitors to the town, who like themselves could get no beds.

Relieved of their anxiety lest I should be vexed at the delay, the mother and son quickly brightened up, and we agreed that as we had to stay there all day we would get all the fun we could out of it. Rosario after a wash and a brush in my room looked as fresh as if she had slept in her own comfortable bed, and as for the boy, he was at an age to enjoy anything.

The innkeeper flatly declined to provide us with coffee or anything else for breakfast, so we went out and ate buñolitos, a peculiar dainty largely in evidence at these country fairs, where booths are set up entirely for their sale. My friends took me to the largest and gayest of the two tents already opened, which had white muslin curtains tied together in the middle with streamers of red and yellow calico, just like the sweet-stalls in Syria. An overpowering smell of boiling oil greeted our nostrils as we approached, and such was the frizzling and the smoke that we could hardly see the buñolera, a stout lady in a brown skirt, white apron, and blue cross-over, with a red handkerchief picturesquely knotted round her head. She saw us, however, and promptly turned to serve us with the odd product of her cooking—a mixture of flour and water squeezed through a funnel into a vast frying-pan and coiled round and round as it fried, until the whole was deftly thrown out unbroken on the dish. Buñolitos are crisp and tempting and really delicious to eat, provided only that the oil be good and of last year’s milling; for the new oil has an abominable smell and taste which only a native can endure.

This was good oil, and the buñolera was an artist. We ate all we could, and be it observed that I fell little short of my companions in the quantity consumed. We paid a penny a piece for our breakfast, and then strolled up the hill to the Parish Church, for it was Sunday and a festival Mass was in progress.

Very few people were present. A couple of nuns, a few ladies shrouded in black gauze veils falling over their shoulders and down to their knees,—a graceful Oriental survival which lends dignity to the stoutest old dowager,—two or three peasants with handkerchiefs on their heads, and the usual group of beggars about the door.

I got past these last without trouble by using the accepted formulas, “Pardon me, brother, for God’s sake,” or “May God support you”; both of which mean that one consigns them to the mercy of Providence because one has no mercy of one’s own for them. And if this seems rather hard-hearted, let me point out that in remote places, where foreigners are never seen from one year’s end to another, the gift of a penny to a single beggar will be a sowing of the dragon’s teeth to raise up as by magic a swarm of from twenty to fifty more, who pursue one with pitiful appeals that change to imprecations and even stone-throwing, unless one proceeds to dole out pennies all round. One may therefore be thankful that the ceremonious response above quoted seldom fails of its effect, it being a matter of etiquette in Spanish mendicant circles politely to accept the time-worn courtesy in lieu of coin of the realm. It has often acted like a charm in my own experience, and I can call to mind brutal-looking men with some affliction or other which by no means hampered their physical power for violence, who stopped short and turned away with a gentle “Go with God” instead of a rude retort, when I answered their petitions with Perdóneme, hermano.

The Mass ended a few minutes after we went in, and as I stood by the main door studying the not very interesting architecture of the church, I suddenly felt a wet finger on my forehead. It was one of the nuns, who, noticing that I had failed to cross myself with holy water, was doing it for me. I appreciated her good intention, but did not appreciate that particular holy water, for the marble vessel was alive with mosquito grubs, whose progenitors swarmed round us where we stood. I knew the holy water was seldom changed in these country churches, but never had I seen any quite so dirty as that.

A clamour of brass instruments drew us out. It was the town band making a round of the chief streets to announce that the fair had begun. It was a much better band than we should find in many English country towns of a similar size, and indeed the level of the brass bands is rather high here—a fact I cannot explain, for among amateurs one practically never hears any concerted music at all, and even when two performers sing together on the stage in the minor theatres, it is as often as not in unison. This band had already woke the town on its first round at 6 a.m., when the church bells were ringing for early Mass, and now as soon as its performance came to an end, a sort of blaring roar from a merry-go-round began and continued at intervals throughout the rest of the day. I had never imagined, far less heard, anything like the noise of that fair in the daytime; but worse was reserved for the night.

Many hours were yet to pass, however, before night fell, and I must say they did not hang heavily, for the people and their animals formed a series of moving pictures which it would need the brush of a Sorolla or a Zuloaga to do justice to. One especially took my fancy. Two pretty girls (and the mountain people are as a rule remarkably handsome), dressed in beautifully laundered print gowns with flowers in their sleek black hair, rode together on a white horse covered with the brilliantly embroidered trappings familiar to us in pictures of the last century and still in common use in the Sierras. One girl sat facing one way and the other the other, with their arms round each other’s waists, and a slim lad in a round Cordovese hat, a brown velvet jacket, and richly embroidered leather overalls,[5] led the horse by a purple-and-white halter made of twisted aloe fibre. On a donkey alongside were slung the girls’ worldly goods, consisting of a box almost as large as the donkey, brilliantly yellow with new paint that gleamed golden in the morning sun, balanced by a large bundle tied up in a crimson wrapper, and topped by a sheaf of pale maize stalks, which would be the donkey’s provender during the fair. It was a riot of youth and beauty and colour and gaiety which would have been the chance of a lifetime for a painter, but sad to say no painter was there to immortalise the scene.

In the afternoon we went to see a circus in the Bull Ring, and in company with the rank and fashion of the town we paid one peseta apiece for what was described on the programme as a “stall.” The “stalls” were honest reed-seated chairs, such as are sold new for two pesetas, but were borrowed on this occasion from the kindly neighbours and brought in by half-dozens at a time, as the aristocratic part of the audience increased.