CHAPTER VIII
ON THE ROAD IN LA MANCHA
It was Sunday morning, the market day of Valdepeñas, when I returned alone to stock my knapsack. The plaza that had been so deserted and peaceful the evening before was packed from casa de comidas to cathedral steps with canvas booths in which the peasants of the encircling country were selling all the products of La Mancha, and among which circulated all the housewives of Valdepeñas, basket on arm. The women of the smaller cities of Spain cling stoutly to their local costumes, aping not in the least the world of fashion. These of Valdepeñas were strikingly different from the Andalusians, considering how slight the distance that separates them from that province. They were almost German in their slowness, with hardly a suggestion of "sal"; a solemn, bronze-tanned multitude who, parting their hair in the middle and combing it tight and smooth, much resembled Indian squaws.
From the northern edge of the city the highway ran straight as the flight of a crow to where it was lost in a flat, colorless horizon. The land was artificially irrigated. The first place I stopped for water was a field in which an old man was driving round and round a blind-folded burro hitched to a noria, a water-wheel that was an exact replica of the Egyptian sakka, even to its squawk, jars of Andújar being tied to the endless chain with leather thongs. The man, too, had that dreamy, listless air of the Egyptian fellah; had I had a kodak to turn upon him I should have expected him to run after me crying for "backsheesh."
Ahead stretched long vistas of low vineyards. The only buildings along the way were an occasional bare uniform stone dwelling of a peon caminero, or government road-tender. At one of these I halted to quench my thirst, and the occupant, smoking in Sabbath ease before it, instantly pronounced me a "norte americano." I showed my astonishment, for hardly once before in the peninsula had I been taken for other than a Frenchman, or a Spaniard from some distant province.
The peon's unusual perspicacity was soon explained; he had been a soldier in Cuba during the Spanish-American War. I readily led him into reminiscences. Throughout the war, he stated, he had fought like a hero, not because he was of that rare breed but because every member of the troop had been filled with the belief that once captured by "los yanquis" he would be hanged on the spot.
"And are you still of the opinion?" I asked.
"Qué barbaridad!" he laughed. "I was taken at Santiago and carried a prisoner to your country. What a people! A whole meal at breakfast! We lived as never before, or since.
"You were quite right, vosotros, to take the island. I do not blame you. It was competición, just competition, like two shop-keepers in the city. I am glad the miserable government lost their Cuba."
So often did I hear exactly this view from Spaniards of the laboring class that it may be considered typical of their attitude toward the late disagreement. The strange question has often been asked whether it is safe so soon after the war for a North American to travel alone in the interior of Spain. For answer we have only to ask ourselves whether a Spaniard traveling alone in the interior of the United States would be in any imminent danger of having his throat cut--even had we been defeated. In Spain there is vastly less, for not only is the Spaniard quicker to forgive and far less belligerent than he is commonly fancied, but there exists in the peninsula not one-tenth the rowdyism and hoodlum "patriotism" of our own country.