Four Months Afoot in Spain

by Harry Alverson Franck

The Plaza, San Fernando. "A'ua! A'ua fresca! Quién quiere beber?"

Thus wanes the night in the Plaza San Fernando, marked by the boom of the Giralda's bells, the bawling of vendors of lottery-tickets, of titbits, of matches, of azucarillos, of naranjeros crying their oranges, of boys carrying miniature roulette-wheels with a cone of sherbet as prize, that the little children may be taught to gamble early in life; and sharply above all else and most incessantly the alpargata-shod water-seller, with his vessel like a powder-can slung across one shoulder, his glasses clinking musically, crying, crying always in his voluptuous, slovenly dialect:

"A'ua! A'ua fresca! A'ua fresca como la nieve! Quién quiere beber?"

We have street calls in the United States, but he whose ear is daily assaulted therewith would have difficulty in imagining how musical these may be when filled, like the thrum of the guitar, the street ballad, the "carol of the lusty muleteer," and the wail of the railway announcer, with the inner soul of Andalusia.

There is to-day very little left of the national costume of Spain. One may except the stiff, square-cut sombrero, the alpargata of workman and beggar, the garb of the arriero, fitting and suiting him as if it had grown on him, the blanket which the peasant wears thrown over one shoulder, not because he realizes what a charm this adds to his appearance, but because he often sleeps out of doors or on the stone floor of public stables. Last, and least to be forgotten, is the mantilla. Except for it the women of Spain have succumbed to the ugly creations of Paris; may that day be centuries distant when the abomination masquerading under the name of woman's hat makes its way into the peninsula. Yet there is never among Spanish women that gaudy affectation of style so frequent elsewhere. Give her the merest strip of gay calico and the española will make it truly ornamental; with a red flower to wear over one temple and a mantilla draped across the back of her head she is more pleasingly adorned than the best that Paris can offer.

There is something unfailingly coquettish about the mantilla. It sets best, perhaps, with a touch of Arab blood; and in the Plaza San Fernando this is seldom lacking. Everywhere are morisco faces framed in the black mantilla and, as if in further reminder of Mohammedan days, there still remains the instinctive habit of holding a corner of the shawl across the chin. Thus accoutered only the Castilian "ojear" can in any sense express the power given the andaluza by her Oriental ancestry to do or say so much with a glance of her black eye. With the fan, too, she is an adept. The Japanese geisha is in comparison a bungler. The woman of Spain has her fan in such fine training that it will carry on extended conversations for her without a word from her lips, as Spanish peasants can talk from two hilltops miles apart by the mere motions of their arms.

But who of all the misinformers of humanity first set afoot the rumor that the sevillana is beautiful? "Salada" she is, brimming over with that "salt" for which she is so justly renowned; chic, too, at times, with her tiny feet and hands and graceful carriage; and always voluptuous. But one might wander long in the music-livened Plaza San Fernando without espying a woman to whom could be granted the unqualified adjective beautiful. On the other hand it is rare that one meets a sevillana, unless she be deeply marked by the finger of time, who is ugly; never, if my search was thorough, one scrawny or angular. In Spain is never that blending and mixture of all types as in our land of boundless migration; hence one may generalize. Salada, graceful, full of languor, above all wholly free from pose, is the sevillana in her mantilla. Of education in the bookish sense she has little, of the striving after "culture" to the divorce of common sense none whatever. She may--and probably does--know nothing of the sciences, or the wrinkle-browed joys of the afternoon club. But she is brimming with health and sound good sense, above all she is incontestably charming; and is not this after all--whisper it not in New England--the chief duty of her sex?

The Andalusian is primarily an out-door people; not merely in the plain and physical sense, but in life and character. He lives his life openly, frankly, setting his face in no mask of Puritanical pretension when he sallies forth into the world, being himself always, in public or in private. All in all among the sincerest, he is also the most abstemious and healthiest of peoples; not yet spoiled by luxury. His existence is reduced to simplicity; more exactly he has never lost touch with eternal nature. He takes time to live and never admits the philosophy that he must work before resting, but hinges his conduct on the creed that he must live first, and do whatever of work there is time left to do. In no sense is he lazy; rather in his sound sanity he has a real appreciation of the value of life. To-day is the great day to him. Live now is his motto, not put off living until he has earned enough to live, only to find it too late to begin. One would seek through Seville in vain for that strained, devil-chased air so stamped on our own national physiognomy. Whatever his vocation, or the hour of the day, the Spaniard has always time to choose the shady side of the street, time to halt and talk with his friends. As I watched him night by night in the Plaza San Fernando--and this is largely typical of all Spain--there came the reflection that the lands of continual striving, the lands where "culture" demands the repression of every natural emotion and enthusiasm, are dreary realms, indeed, compared with the Living Latin South. Here is not merely animation, but life, real life everywhere, no mere feigned living.

On my second Sunday in Seville I attended my second bullfight. The first I had seen from the depths of the sombra, believing the assertion that none but a man with Arabic blood in his veins could endure the unshaded side of the arena. But my fear of sun-stroke had melted away; moreover, the sun-side gate keeper is most easily satisfied. I bought a ticket at a corner of las Sierpes and entered the plaza as soon as the doors were opened.