Poor Folk in Spain

by Jan Gordon; Cora Gordon

It was a clear and windless day, and soon we remarked a characteristic which Murcia exhibited more strongly than any other Spanish town we have visited. Each house had exuded its own smell across the pavement, so as one went along one sampled a variety of Spanish household odours. Some people find an intimate connection between colour and smell. We might say that we passed successfully through a pink smell, a purple smell, a citron green smell, a terra verte smell (very nasty), a cobalt smell, a raw sienna smell, and so on. This characteristic clung to Murcia during the greater part of our stay.

About fifteen minutes' walk through these variegated odoriferous layers brought us into a street of mean appearance. The interpreter stopped before a large gateway door, pushed it open and ushered us into a courtyard in the corner of which was a black earthenware pot astew over an open fire. A brown-faced crone, withered with dirt and age, her clothes ragged, her feet shod in burst alpagatas, asked us what had brought us there.

"Where is Blas?" said the interpreter.

With an unctuous gesture the old gipsy crone spread out her hands, and turning to a doorway shouted out some words. Gipsy women young and old came from the house. They were dark, dirty and tousled, clad in draggled greys or vermilions, many carrying brown babies astraddle on the hip. With gestures, almost Indian in subservience, they crowded about us, looking at us with ill-disguised curiosity. The interpreter repeated his question.

"Blas," said a young, beautiful, though depressed-looking woman, "is not in the house."

"The English Señor will speak to him," commanded the interpreter. "Send him to the hotel when he comes home."

Then our friend the interpreter determined to earn a large tip, and calculating on our ignorance brought us back by the longest route, past all the principal buildings of the town; thereby quadrupling the journey through the baking streets. Our desires, however, were fixed on home. We were staggering beneath the heat. Had the interpreter but known it, his tip would have been increased by celerity; but, stung by our apathy over public monuments, he took us into a courtyard to look at some gigantic tomatoes gleaming in the shade, and ran us across the street to examine a skein of fine white catgut, dyed orange at the tips, which a workman was carrying. He explained that this was for medical operations and for fishing lines, which was a local industry.

Lunch was ready when we got back, a prolonged and delicious lunch for those in health, but we could eat little of it. Black olives were in a dish on the table; and the fruit included large ripe figs, peaches, pears and apricots. A curious fact we had noted was that much of the fruit did not ripen properly. Either it was unripe or else had begun to rot in the centre. The sun was too strong to allow it to reach the stage of exquisite ripeness which the more temperate climate of England encourages. The waiter was dismayed by our lack of appetite. He urged us repeatedly to further gastronomic efforts, and holding dishes beneath our noses stirred up the contents with a fork. At last he made us a special salad which was not on the menu. The other occupants of the long white restaurant were all fat men who swallowed course after course in spite of the heat. We looked at them and thought: "No wonder there are so many plump people in Spain."

After coffee in the large hall, we went to our bedroom for a rest. The windows of our room looked southwards, over the muddy river. Immediately beneath was a road on which was a wayside stall of bottles and old ironwork, an ice-cream vendor, a boy roasting coffee on a stove, turning a handle round and round while the coffee beans rustled in the heated iron globe, sending up a delicious smell to our windows. A row of covered carriages, tartanas, waited beneath the shadows of the riverside trees. All along the opposite bank were two-storied mills, and beyond them the town stretched out in a wedge of flat roofs bursting up into church towers. Green market gardens came up to the edge of the town, and covered the valley to the base of the hills with a dense growth of flat and flourishing green which one had not expected thus far south in Spain.