The Pyrenees

by Hilaire Belloc

(1) General

The political situation has so developed that it is no longer advisable, as I formerly said, but necessary to have one’s passport viséd for Spain before starting for the Pyrenees, even if one has no intention of crossing the frontier. For, as I said when the book was written, there are occasions when the traveller on foot in the mountains may cross the frontier unwittingly, and have to deal with the authorities on the farther side. To this must be added the consideration that a stricter central government in Spain, coupled with occasional plots against it, has made the frontier authorities particularly vigilant. They may take from a traveller anything which looks like an offensive weapon—an acquaintance of mine was deprived, for instance, of a very large stick, and he might have fared worse with a very large knife. It is well to remember that when you enter Spain by this frontier you are coming in by its most remote, least peopled, and most difficult area, and that one must have nothing to explain if one can help it. I mean, of course, when you enter over the main range; for the two main roads and railways at either end of the chain by the sea-coasts of the Atlantic and the Mediterranean are common international highways.

Another point to remember, which is a small one but now and then, though very rarely, important to the traveller, is that the variation in the compass has changed since this book was written. It was written twenty years ago, and was published nearly nineteen years ago, and since then the variation of the compass has lessened (for this part of the world) by something like three degrees. The traveller must further remember that (though it is not very strictly enforced) there is a new law in France both for travellers proposing to reside a certain time in the country and (this is strictly enforced) a daily tax for travellers using foreign motor-cars in the country; while all the Spanish corresponding regulations have been tightened up. The wise thing to do, therefore, if you mean to spend more than a fortnight in these hills on either side of the border, is to inform yourself thoroughly upon arrival of what is required of you. You can do it in France easily enough; but as on the Spanish side the main towns are a long way from the range, you will do well, if you intend to spend any number of days to the south of the frontier, to find out at the Spanish Consulate in London or at your nearest large town what formalities may be needed.

On the effect of the change in prices I deal elsewhere. But there are two things to be remembered here, with one of which most people are familiar, but the other of which most people have not as yet appreciated. The first is that on the French as on the Spanish side, but much more on the French side than on the Spanish, the old unit of currency does not mean, in gold, what it meant when this book was written.

In France it means in gold only one-fifth at the present apparently stabilized rate of what it meant when I first put these pages together. We are on a gold basis in England. A franc used, before the war, to be nearly 10d. It is to-day almost exactly 2d. On the Spanish side the peseta fluctuates somewhat, but at the moment of writing it is well below thirty (twenty-eight odd), which means that the peseta, once nominally equal to the franc, is between 8d. and 9d., or rather more than four times the present value of the franc.

But the second point, which is much less generally appreciated, is even more important to retain. Prices in gold have changed. There are all sorts of views as to the real amount of the change; but I think we are not very far wrong in basing any calculation of expense upon a basis of doubling. At any rate, if you do that you will not be disappointed. The gold franc or gold peseta buys in 1927 more than half as much, but not much more than half as much, as it did before the war. In other words, the franc to-day is not in practice half of a fifth, that is, one-tenth, of what it was before the war, nor is the peseta in practice as little as fourpence halfpenny compared with prices before the war. You get more for your money than such a rough rule of thumb would warrant. But remember that you are getting things cheaper than the strict gold basis would allow. For instance, I know of one particular inn on the French side of the frontier, high up in the valleys (it is a very good one and a typical one), where they charge for food, including wine, and lodging, fifty to sixty francs a day. You would not have got the same thing for five or six francs in 1914; but you would have got it for seven or eight. My object in emphasizing this is to prevent the traveller from thinking that under modern conditions he is being bled. It is rather the other way. He is getting things somewhat cheaper still in these mountains than world prices would warrant. He must expect to pay on the very different scale I have indicated.

Lastly, let me add in connexion with prices that, for a variety of reasons which it would take too long to go into, he must expect a very distinct rise in general expenses as measured in English exchange when he passes from French into Spanish territory. He must allow for something like an increase of a third, and perhaps in the larger towns of a half of what he pays on the French side.

Further, when he is looking for anything like luxury, even in the humblest sense of that term, he must be prepared to pay (e.g. for foreign wines, or for well-appointed travel by car) nearly double on the Spanish side what he would have to pay on the French.

The traveller should remember that there has been a very great expansion of good roads on the Spanish side compared with what there was when this book was written, and with that has gone an almost universal system of motor-buses, which have quite changed travel on the southern side of the range. He will do well always to ask before trying to go by the slow and few trains what the motor-bus services are. Thus, in the old days when this book was written, a man had either to go on foot or by slow horse vehicles across Roncesvalles to Pamplona. To-day there is a first-rate service of rapid motor-buses, and he will find that to be the case pretty well everywhere between the Mediterranean end and the Atlantic.