Spanish Highways and Byways

by Katharine Lee Bates

Such wrath can easily be the seamy side of love, and, in a way, the man's national pride was measured by his national shame; but always over these outbursts there brooded that something hopelessly resigned, drearily fatalistic, which seems to vitiate the Spanish indignation for any purposes of practical reform. To suggestions of sympathy he responded with a pathetic weariness of manner, this handsome young Hercules, so radiant with the joy of life, who, in his normal mood, sprinkled mirth and mischief from him as a big dog shakes off water drops.

"What can one do? I am a Spaniard. I say it to myself a hundred times a day. I am a Spaniard, and I wish my country were worth the fighting for, worth the dying for. But is it? Is it worth the toothache? God knows the truth, and let it rest there. Oh, you need not tell me of its past. It was once the most glorious of nations. Spaniards were lords of the West. But—ah, I know, I know—Spain has never learned how to rule her colonies. He who sows brambles reaps thorns. The Church, too, has done much harm in Spain—not more harm than another. I am a Catholic, but as I see it, priests differ from other men only in this—in the café sit some bad men and many good, and in the choir kneel some good priests and many bad. The devil lurks behind the cross. But Spain will never give up her Church. It is burned in. You are a heretic, and like my figure, do you not? It is burned in. There is no hope for Spain but to sink her deep under the earth, and build a new Spain on top. And why do I not work for that new Spain? How may a man work? There is talk enough in Spain as it is. Most Spaniards talk and do no more. They go to the cafés and, when they have emptied their cups, they draw figures on the tables and they talk. That is all. The new Spain will never come. What should it be? Oh, I know better what it should not be. It should have no king. A republic—that is right. Perhaps not a republic precisely like America. It may be," and the melancholy sarcasm of the tone deepened, "there could be found something even better. But Spain will not find it. Spain will find nothing.

"What can one do? I know Spain too well. Now, hear! I am acquainted with a caballero. I have been his friend ten years and more. But he has had the luck, not I. For, first, when we were at the university, he had a fortune left to him. He became betrothed to a señorita whom he loved better than his eyelashes. He travelled for his pleasure to Monte Carlo, and played his fortune all away in one week. He came back to Madrid, and went to one of the Ministers, to whom his father had in former days done a great service. My friend said: 'I am to marry. The lady expects to share the fortune which I have lost. My position is not honorable. I must have an opening, a chance to redeem myself, or I shall stand disgraced before her.' The Minister sent him to one of the Cuban custom-houses, and in two years he returned with great wealth. On his wedding journey he spent a night at Monte Carlo and gambled it away to the last peseta. A stranger had to lend him money to get home with his bride. Was he not ashamed and troubled? Ashamed? I do not know. But troubled? Yes, for he wanted to play longer. Every one is as God has made him, and very often worse. Again he went to the Minister, whose heart was softer than a ripe fig and who found him a post in the Philippines. This time he made a fortune much quicker than before, knowing better how to do unjustly, but a few weeks before the war he came home and lost it all again at Monte Carlo. And now he is horribly vexed, for it is another Minister, and, besides, there are no colonies to enrich him any more.

"What use to care for Spain? No, no, no, no, no! Spain is a good country to leave—that is all. And you do well to travel in Spain. American ladies like change, and Spain is not America. Here you are not only in a different land, but in a different century. You can say, when you come out, that you have been journeying a hundred years ago."

On another occasion one of those pleasant individuals who would, as the Spaniards say, "talk of a rope in the house of one who had been hanged," saw fit to entertain the dinner-table with anecdotes of Spanish cruelty.

"But Spaniards are not cruel," protested our young blackamoor in his softest voice an hour later, stroking with one great hand the head of a child who nestled against his knee. "What did that English fellow mean? Why should any one think that Spaniards are cruel?"

I ran over in mind a few of the frightful stories of Las Casas, that good Dominican friar who would not hold his peace when he saw the braining of Indian babies and roasting of Indian chiefs. I remembered how De Soto tossed his captives to the bloodhounds, and what atrocities were wrought in the tranquil realm of the Incas; I recalled the horrors of the Inquisition, but these things were of the past. So I answered, "Perhaps the bull-fights have done something to give foreigners that impression."

Unlike many educated Spaniards who would rather attend the bull-fights than defend them, he squared his shoulders for an oration.

"The bull-fights? But why? Bull-fights are not cruel—not more cruel than other sports in other countries. I have been told of prize-fights in America. I beg your pardon. I see by your look that you do not like them. And, in truth, I do not altogether like the bull-fights. The horses! They are blindfolded, and it is short, but I have seen—ah, yes! You would not wish to hear what I have seen. I have been often sorry for the horses. Yet some pain is necessary in everything, is it not? In nature, perhaps? In society, perhaps? Even, if you will pardon the illustration, in the deliverance of the Filipinos from Spanish tyranny?"

I briefly suggested that there was no element of necessity in bull-fights.