My Spanish Year

by Ellen M. Whishaw

“Yes, it was quite true that there was hardly anything to eat. It was also true that there was no work at present, and thus the supplies of rice, garbanzos, and haricot beans given by the Señores were more welcome than words could say. But the good sun was shining and everything would soon dry up, and then the rich Señors Fulano and Mengano, who owned all the land round about, would have to employ every hand they could get to sow the fields over again, for they certainly would not lose a whole season’s crops, and they would have to pay good wages too, for there would be work for every able-bodied man from Seville to Cordova. And thus, if God pleased, good might soon come out of their present misery.”

One of the more prosperous women, who had a loft above her cottage—a great rarity in this single-storeyed village—and thus had been able to save her furniture, insisted on giving us hot coffee before we left, and indignantly refused to be paid for it. “It was the least she could do when we had been so good to them,” she said, and she had a brazier burning so that we should not feel the damp of the room, which she had just finished whitewashing before we came.

We felt ashamed to demur at sitting for ten minutes in the kitchen, reeking with damp, where the family had to live, but we were shivering with cold before we could decently take our leave, and since then I have always wondered why the whole village did not die of fever and ague, instead of being noted for their excellent health.

The cheerfulness with which the disaster was met at Algaba was even more striking at Triana. Here those whose houses had two or three storeys all took refuge on the upper floors, and were fed from boats for the six days during which the suburb was under water. Rations for all were provided by the authorities, and no one here need have starved, although the organisation of supplies for some ten thousand people in this quarter alone, besides several thousands more in flooded streets on the outskirts of the town itself, was a task of no small difficulty. Every one fared alike, getting only bread and the plainest fare, but in sufficient quantities to keep body and soul together if each took no more than his fair share. Very few could get ferried through the flooded streets to the bridge into Seville, and indeed for a day or two wheeled traffic over the single bridge was forbidden, save to convey food, for the water was nearly up to the top of the arch, and the whole structure was threatened. Had the bridge gone, all Triana must have starved, for no boat could cross that raging torrent.

Few lives were lost, though house after house in the oldest and poorest quarters fell in, and in one case a whole family was shut up in an old building without a window to the street, and when they were discovered three days later two of the children were dead from cold and hunger. For it was very cold during those grey, sunless days. But the rescue work was as well organised as the commissariat, and the young vicar of the parish, Don Bernardo Guerra, who was working like a man, became the hero of the imprisoned Trianeros. He himself seemed quite unaware of his popularity; indeed, he said his people were angry with him because, “although he was working at relief so many hours a day that he had hardly time to eat or drink or sleep or pray, it was impossible to supply a hundredth part of their needs.”

“But now that the sun is shining again, things are going better,” he said. “Indeed, even during the worst of the bad week it was surprising how a fitful gleam of sunshine enlivened the inundated people. The Trianeros have a gaiety of spirit peculiarly their own, which never deserts them for long, and it was curious to see how it came out among the hundreds of refugees housed in our new school buildings. It was also very noticeable how the women preserved even there their habits of cleanliness and decency. None of them had more privacy than they could obtain by hanging up shawls and sheets to separate one family from another, and yet most of them contrived to keep their own little places tidy and comparatively comfortable. The gipsies, it is true, looked as if they were picnicking in a rag fair, but they kept together at one end of the big class-rooms, apart from the other refugees. And you would have smiled to see the girls dressing their hair as if for a fiesta, and even dancing while the young men sang to a guitar which one of them had saved from the wreck of his home. It was difficult to believe—when the sun shone for a few moments—what desolation there was outside. But when night fell the suffering was at its worst. The authorities managed to keep water, gas, and electric light going in the streets, but in the houses the fittings were all under water, and the darkness accentuated the distress. And then the pistol shots going off for help, and the difficulty of locating the sound along the flooded streets, and the fear of arriving too late to save lives ... it was an experience one would not forget in a century.”

Don Bernardo stopped speaking, with a look in his liquid-brown eyes as of one who sees a nightmare.

“But you did always get there in time?” I gently prompted; “what about the affair in the Calle Evangelio? I saw it mentioned in the papers. They said you got an ovation.”

“The papers talk a lot of nonsense,” said the priest, smiling once more. “It was nothing, and what credit there was is not mine. Now about those mattresses? How many more can you provide from the English Relief Fund? We are to get fifteen hundred from the Government grant, they tell me, but not until the money is paid, and I am wondering if it will come before next summer. Meanwhile the hundred sent by the English ladies have been a great boon, and there were also sixteen from a Spanish lady. But we want a thousand at once, for families who have lost everything and now are sleeping on the floors of houses which were under water a week ago. Ay de mi de mi alma! And all this suffering would have been prevented if the Government had agreed to the protective work on the old river bed last year!”

“But I want to know about the affair in the Calle Evangelio,” I persisted, and Don Bernardo, always courteous, could not refuse to tell me.