Four Months Afoot in Spain

by Harry Alverson Franck

As I sat toward evening in one of these establishments, there entered a man something over thirty-five, dressed in boína and workingman's garb that showed but slight wear. I noted him only half consciously, being at that moment expressing to the landlord my surprise that the king, instead of being in Bilbáo as he was reported by the newspapers, was ten or twelve miles away on his yacht at the mouth of the river. The keeper, a stocky Basque of much better parts than the average of his guild, glanced up from his spigots and replied in a smooth and pleasant voice:

"Porque, señor, no quiere morir tan joven--Because he does not care to die so young."

"Y con mujer tan bella y fresca--And with a wife so beautiful and fresh," added a thick-set fellow at a neighboring table without looking up from his cards.

Love for Alfonso is not one of the characteristics of the masses in this section of the country.

Meanwhile the newcomer, whose eye had been wandering leisurely over the assembly, threaded his way half across the room to sit down at my table. I wondered a bit at the preference, but certain he was no tout, gave him the customary greeting. By the time I had accepted a glass and treated in turn we were exchanging personal information. He announced himself a cobbler, and even before I had broached the subject suggested that he could find me a lodging with an old woman above his shop. This workroom, when we reached it, proved to be nothing but a kit of tools and a few strips of leather scattered about the small hallway at the foot of the stairs. I found above the hospitality he had promised, however, and paying two night's lodging in an unusually pleasant room, descended.

The shoemaker appeared more obliging than industrious, for he at once laid aside the shoe he was hammering and announced that he was going to give himself the pleasure of spending the evening with me and of finding me the best place to take in the fireworks that were to be set off in honor of the king. I explained that it was rather my plan to attend the city theater, where I might both see that remarkable personage in the flesh and hear one of Molière's best comedies in Spanish.

"There is more than time for both," replied the cobbler, and forthwith fell to extolling the coming spectacle so highly that he came near to arousing within me, too, an interest in the fireworks.

At the end of an hour's stroll we found ourselves on the summit of a knoll in the outskirts, in a compact sea of Bilbaoans watching a tame imitation of a Fourth of July celebration on the slope of one of the surrounding hills. The display was, as I have said, in honor of the king; though it turned out that his indifferent majesty was at that moment dining and wining a company of fellow-sportsmen on board the Giralda twelve miles away.

The cobbler set a more than leisurely pace back to the city, but we regained at length the bank of the river and, crossing the wooded Paseo Arenal, approached the theater. Before it, was packed a vast and compact multitude through which I struggled my way to the entrance, only to be informed in the customary box-office tones that there was not another ticket to be had. The shoemaker was no theater-goer, and as my own disappointment was not overwhelming, we set out to fight our way back to the Paséo.

Long before we had succeeded in that venturesome undertaking, however, there burst forth a sudden, unheralded roar of uncounted voices, the immense throng surged riverward with an abruptness that all but swept us off our feet, the thunder of thousands of hoofs swelled nearer, and down upon us rode an entire regiment of guardias civiles in uniforms so new they seemed but that moment to have left the tailor, and astride finer horses than I had dreamed existed in Spain. Straight into the crowd they dashed, headlong, at full canter, like cowboys into a drove of steers, sweeping all before them, scattering luckless individuals in all directions, and completely surrounding the theater in solid phalanx. Before I had recovered breath there arose another mighty shout, and, some three hundred more horsemen, with a richly caparisoned carriage in their midst, dashed through the throng from a landing-stage on the river bank behind us to the door of the theater. I caught a fleeting glimpse of a slight figure in a rakish overcoat, a burst of music sounded from the theater, and died as suddenly away as the doors closed behind the royal arrival. Again the cavalry charged, driving men, women and children pellmell back a hundred yards from the building and, forming a yet wider circle around it, settled down to sit their horses like statues until the play should be ended.