My Spanish Year

by Ellen M. Whishaw

The Villamartín fireworks were beautiful, differing from those of the big towns only in quantity, not at all in quality, and the set pieces were quite the most attractive to the crowd, whose inherited instincts are all for the arabesque in art.

After the fireworks came a cinematograph, still accompanied by the band, whose repertoire consisted of six pieces, very well played, which they had been repeating at intervals all day. The people grew wildly enthusiastic over the moving pictures, and shouted and laughed and clapped like children, at the runaway who upsets every one he meets as he evades his pursuers, at the illicit lover who hides under the dinner-table and turns it over so as to spill the soup into the lady’s lap, and at all the other stale old jokes which seemed to be brand-new to these unsophisticated southerners. There was no risk at all of our going to sleep and forgetting our diligence now. No one but a deaf mute could have closed an eye in the main square of Villamartín that night.

After midnight, when the cinematograph closed, I laid me down fondly imagining I might get a little sleep; but the clamour of the voices in no way diminished. On the contrary, as the night wore on it began to rise louder and louder, until it became a perfect roar. Now and then it would die down for a few minutes, until a boyish voice shouted something that I could not catch, when it began again worse than ever, still good-natured, but sounding ever more impatient, as if the self-restraint of the crowd were rapidly becoming exhausted.

At last, about half-past one, a distant noise like thunder made itself heard above all the human din, and then the crowd seemed to go perfectly mad, yelling and shouting like Bedlam let loose. It was time to get ready to leave anyhow, so I rose from my sleepless bed and went to the window.

Then I saw what it all meant. It was the encierro, the bringing in of the bulls for the bull-fight next day. In this case they were not full grown bulls; only year-old bullocks, and of these there were but two, the rest of the future victims being heifers. For fighting bulls cost a good deal of money, and Villamartín is a small town and not particularly rich: so the sportsmen of the ring here have to content themselves with the inexpensive heifer and “yarlin’,” as they say in Devon.

To hear the yells of delight raised when they came in sight, one would have thought that all Villamartín was out to receive the bullocks and their decoy: but as a matter of fact all Villamartín except the dregs had long gone home to bed, and the howling mob consisted entirely of a few men of mature years, financially interested in the bull-ring, and a crowd of boys and lads, the rag-tag and bobtail of the working classes, for the respectable working men and their families do not approve of the “sport.” These two elements in the Spanish social system nowadays form the immense majority of those who still support what is called “the national sport.” Yet tourists seem to imagine that they represent the nation! So well is it recognised by the governing classes that the bull-fight has ceased to appeal to any save the riff-raff and those to whom, in one capacity or another, it is a source of income, that legislative attempts have been made to forbid the bull-fights on Sunday, because if they only took place on week-days the aforesaid dregs of the working classes would find it difficult to attend at the cost of a day’s wages, and the whole brutal concern would soon come to an end. But the vested interests are tremendously strong, and capital has great power in Spain; so the bull-fight still goes on, and the tourists go to see it, and Spanish social reformers shrug their shoulders when they are told by foreigners that the first step to social reform in Spain must be the suppression of the bull-ring, which the foreigners’ entrance money largely helps to keep going, and of which their mere presence is supposed by amateurs to express approval.

But this is another of the tragedies of Spain, and Rosario and her boy, who hate the very name of bull-fight, though they are mere peasants and never heard of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, did not talk about it that night with me as we watched the tumultuous passage of a particularly lively heifer across the square under my window. Setting aside humanitarian considerations, it was a picturesque sight enough, for the victims of the morrow, surrounded and steered by half a dozen stolid old cows with bells on their necks, were preceded and followed by the garrochistas, those herders of the wild cattle, with the high-peaked saddles and great square stirrups and long poles with iron points, which form so effective a group on post-cards purporting to represent the everyday life of Spain. Some of the rabble had gone out to meet the procession with torches, and these still flared as the crowd surged by, making curious yellow cross-lights when they fell on the glare of the arc lights of the town.

I have been told that it was once proposed to start a branch of the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals at Madrid, and that in order to obtain funds a great bull-fight was organised. I do not know whether Ben Trovato is responsible for this story, but I have myself met a member of that Society, an English lady of mature years, who refused to subscribe to an entertainment in Spain because it was to take place on a Sunday, and then quarrelled violently with her husband because he refused to take tickets for her for the bull-fight on Easter Day! This is a true story, though the well-known Italian raconteur might be proud to father it. I remember also a British curate of extreme evangelical opinions, who gave at a luncheon party a full, true, and particular account, with realistic details, of the disembowelling of a horse and the wounding of a torero that he had witnessed, embellished with the usual expressions of horror at the innate degradation of a nation which supported such barbarities. Some unkind person present remarked that it was believed that the Bishop of Gibraltar objected to his chaplains attending the bull-fight; to which the ingenuous curate replied: “Ah, but you see I went in without my clerical collar”—the fatuous immorality of which remark closed the conversation.

I was not altogether sorry when the time came to start for Algodonales. I had never heard such prolonged and uncontrolled noise made by human beings before, and much though the whole thing had amused me I do not care if I never hear such a noise again. When we made our way out into the brilliantly lighted square most of the crowd appeared to be drunk, but riff-raff though they might be, they were civil to the last, and good-naturedly lurched aside in a bunch to make room for us to pass into the comparative darkness of the street where the diligence awaited us, we, needless to say, being the only passengers who wished to leave the town just then.