My Spanish Year

by Ellen M. Whishaw

I weakly gave the perilla. No other beggars were near to see, and the picture was worth it. I continually regret as I travel in Spain that I was not born a painter.

It was another nuit blanche for me after that. Any one who knows the joy and the glory of daybreak and sunrise over the hills will understand that one would not willingly lose a moment of the glowing change from darkest shadow to glowing dawn. It is not fully light in these latitudes before six in September, and the beauty of the morning does not culminate till nearly eight. The boy slept dreamlessly, and poor tired Rosario dozed with her head on his shoulder, but I sat and gazed till my eyes were dazzled by the splendour of the sun on the everlasting hills.

About 7.30 we came to a venta by a fine new bridge with one arch spanning the river. It was only built a few years ago, when the high road was extended to Algodonales. Until then this thriving village, with some 7000 inhabitants and a large trade in fruit and vegetables and walnut wood, had no communication with the outer world save by a mule track. Now it is on one of the main roads from Ronda to Jerez, and I hear that since I was there it has been provided with a motor-service from Jerez. From the bridge to Algodonales is a shady climb, the scenery growing more beautiful at every turn; and Algodonales itself is one of the prettiest villages I have seen in Spain, all orchards and walnut groves, with the music of running waters wherever one goes.

It still retains its Arabic name, the meaning of which is “cotton-fields,” and the tradition of cotton grown there “en tiempos antiguos.” One can understand that cotton-growing might have been a staple industry among the Arabs who came here from Egypt, for the valleys around are well sheltered, and an inexhaustible supply of water is brought from the hills above and distributed through an Arabic fountain with fourteen mouths. In the hottest summer it never fails, and the town and the huertas are still supplied according to irrigation laws dating from Arabic times, in a strict order of precedence which no one ever dreams of disputing.

I was shown the tiny garden of a poor old man, rich with green vegetables and ripening fruit, and told how, when he brought a complaint against a flour mill recently erected by a rich man, for taking his water, the case was immediately decided in his favour, because his little huerta was on the old cañeria (irrigation system), and therefore held rights inalienable for all time. It reminded me of the story of a poor man at Cordoba to whom the great Khalif Abderrahman III. paid an enormous price for a few feet of land alongside of the river, because the poor man showed that if he lost that land the water rights of his huerta would be interfered with.

All along the cañerias, which everywhere except in the streets are open to the air, maidenhair fern grows in masses, and all the banks are green with wild vegetation. One sees here, as in many other places, that Spain needs nothing but irrigation to become one of the richest corn- and fruit-producing countries in Europe, for in this climate, once you have water, one crop succeeds another all the year round.

Rosario’s coming had been announced beforehand, and it seemed to me that the whole village was waiting to welcome her. It was pretty to see the care she and her friends took that I should not feel left out in the cold, and before I knew where I was I found myself installed as a guest in the house of the youngest but most prosperous of her sisters, and quite unable, without actual discourtesy, to seek as I had intended a couple of rooms in the main street, whence I should get a view of the walnut trees, the huertas, and the hills.

The sister’s husband was the leading baker of the place, and his ancient bakery of Arabic construction, with its vast dark granaries and cavernous ovens, seemed to cover about an acre of ground. They had arranged their own bedroom for me, with beautifully embroidered linen on their own handsome brass bedstead, and the only wash-basin in the house, a very small one of enamelled iron, planted on one of the numerous chairs which form the chief furniture of a Spanish bedroom, whether rich or poor. They apologised for not having cleared out the drawers for me, as they were full of the children’s clothes, and they had not ventured to assume that I would honour them by accepting their hospitality until I saw whether I could put up with so poor a house.

I only had two objections to it. The first was that the spacious entrance was the favourite meeting-place of all the women of the neighbourhood, with their babies, who cried a good deal; and the second was that the one little window of the bedroom opened on to a pigsty. This Rosario apologised for, saying that she knew English ladies did not like smells, but if I could otherwise be comfortable here, the pigsty should be cleaned out every day during my visit, instead of—as was customary—once a month.