Spanish Life in Town and Country

by L. Higgin; Eugène E. Street

Spaniards, as a rule, speak English with an excellent accent, having all the sounds that the English possess, taking the three kingdoms, England, Scotland, and Ireland, into account.

Our th, which is unpronounceable to French, Italians, and Germans, however long they may have lived in England, comes naturally to the Spaniard, because in his own d, soft c, and z he has the sounds of our th in "thee" and "thin." His ch is identical with ours, and his j and x are the same as the Irish and Scotch pronunciation of ch and gh.

The Spanish language is not difficult to learn—at any rate to read and understand—because there are absolutely no unnecessary letters, if we except the initial h, which is, or appears to us, silent—and the pronunciation is invariable. What a mine of literary treasure is opened to the reader by a knowledge of Spanish, no one who is ignorant of that majestic and poetic language can imagine. With the single exception of Longfellow's beautiful rendering of the Coplas de Manrique, which is absolutely literal, while preserving all the grace and dignity of the original, I know of no translation from the Spanish which gives the reader any real idea of the beauty of Spanish literature in the past ages, nor even of such works of to-day as those of Juan Valera and some others.

Picturesque and poetic ideas seem common to the Spaniard to-day, as ever. Only the other day, in discussing the monument to be erected to Alfonso XII. in Madrid, one of the newspapers reported the suggestion—finally adopted, I think—that it should be an equestrian statue of the young King, "with the look on his face with which he entered Madrid after ending the Carlist war." What a picture it summons to the imagination of the boy King—for he was no more—in the pride of his conquest of the elements of disorder and of civil war, which had so long distracted his beloved country—a successful soldier and a worthy King!

Spain is a country of surprises and of contradictions; even her own people seem unable to predict what may happen on the morrow. Those who knew her best had come to despair of her emancipation at the very moment when Prim and Topete actually carried the Revolution to a successful issue. Again, after the miserable fiasco of the attempt at a republic, the world, even in Spain itself, was taken by surprise by the peaceful restoration of Alfonso XII.

I can, perhaps, most fitly end this attempt at showing the causes of Spain's decay and portraying the present characteristics of this most interesting and romantic nation by a quotation from the pen of one of her sons. Don Antonio Ferrer del Rio, Librarian of the Ministry of Commerce, Instruction, and Public Works, and member of the Reales Academias de Buenas Letras of Seville and Barcelona, thus writes, in his preface to his Decadencia de España, published in Madrid in 1850: "It is my intention to point out the true origin of the decadence of Spain. The imagination of the ordinary Spaniard has always been captivated by, and none of them have failed to sing the praises of, those times in which the sun never set on the dominion of its kings." While professing not to presume to dispute this former glory, Señor Ferrer del Rio goes on to say that he only aspires to get at the truth of his country's subsequent decay. "There was one happy epoch in which Spain reached the summit of her greatness—that of the Reyes Católicos, Don Fernando V. and Doña Isabel I. Under their reign were united the sceptres of Castilla, Aragon, Navarra, and Granada; the feudal system disappeared—it had never extended far into the eastern limits of the kingdom—the abuses in the Church were in great measure reformed, the administration of the kingdom with the magnificent reign of justice began to be consolidated, in the Cortes the powerful voice of the people was heard; and almost at the same moment Christian Spain achieved the conquest of the Moors, against whom the different provinces had been struggling for eight centuries, and the immortal discovery of a new world. Up to this moment the prosperity of Spain was rising; from that hour her decadence began. With her liberty she lost everything, although for some time longer her military laurels covered from sight her real misfortunes." After referring to the defeat of the Comuneros, and the execution of Padilla and his companions, champions of the people's rights, he goes on to show that while the aristocracy had received a mortal blow in the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella in the cause of consolidating the kingdom and of internal order, they had retained sufficient power to trample on the liberties of the people, while they were not strong enough to form a barrier against the encroachments of the absolute monarchs who succeeded, or to prevent the power eventually lapsing into the hands of the Church. "Consequently, theocracy gained the ascendency, formidably aided and strengthened by the odious tribunal whose installation shadowed even the glorious epoch of Isabel and Fernando, absorbing all jurisdiction, and interfering with all government. Religious wars led naturally to European conflicts, to the Spanish people being led to wage war against heresy everywhere, and the nation—exhausted by its foreign troubles, oppressed internally under the tyranny of the Inquisition, which, usurping the name of 'Holy,' had become the right hand of the policy of Charles V., and the supreme power in the Government of his grandson, Philip II.—lost all the precious gifts of enlightenment in a blind and frantic fanaticism. The people only awoke from lethargy, and showed any animation, to rush in crowds to the Autos da fé in which the ministers of the altar turned Christian charity into a bleeding corpse, and reproduced the terrible scenes of the Roman amphitheatre. Where the patricians had cried 'Christians to the lions!' superstition shouted 'Heretics to the stake!' Humanity was not less outraged than in the spectacle of Golgotha. Spanish monarchs even authorised by their presence those sanguinary spectacles, while the nobles and great personages in the kingdom thought themselves honoured when they were made alguiciles, or familiars of the holy office. Theocratic power preponderated, and intellectual movement became paralysed, civilisation stagnated."

This has ever been the result of priestly rule. One can understand the feeling of the liberal-minded Spaniard of to-day that, without wishing to interfere with the charitable works inaugurated by the clergy, nor desiring in any way to show disrespect to the Church, or the religion which is dear to the hearts of the people, a serious danger lies, as the Press is daily pointing out, in the religious orders, more especially the Jesuits, obtaining a pernicious influence over the young, undermining by a system of secret inquisition the teachings of science, gaining power over the minds of the officers in the army, and establishing a press agency which shall become a danger to the constitution.

Spain's outlook seems brighter to-day than it has ever been since her Golden Age of Isabella and Ferdinand; and it is the people who have awakened, a people who have shown what power lies in them to raise their beloved country to the position which is her right among the nations of the world. But prophecy is vain in a country of which it has been said "that two and two never make four." This year, if all go well meantime, Alfonso XIII. will take the reins in his own hands—a mere boy, even younger than his father was when called to the throne; than whom, however, Spain has never had a more worthy ruler. But Alfonso XII. had been schooled by adversity—he had to some extent roughed it amongst Austrian and English boys. He came fresh from Sandhurst and from the study of countries other than his own. To a naturally clever mind he had added the invaluable lesson of a knowledge of the world as seen by one of the crowd, not from the close precincts of a court and the elevation of a throne.

For his son it may be said that he has been born and carefully educated in a country where absolutism is dead, and by a mother who, as Regent, has scrupulously observed the laws of the constitution. He will come, as King, to a country which has known the precious boon of liberty too long to part with it lightly; to a kingdom now, for the first time in history, united as one people; where commerce and mutual interests have taken the place of internecine distrust and hatred. It is only at the present moment that this happy condition of things is spreading over the country; each month, each week, giving fresh evidence of new industries arising, of fresh capital invested in the development of the country. It is in the sums so invested by the mass of the people that those who believe in a bright future for Spain place their hopes; but we may all of us wish the young monarch for whom his country is longing, "God-speed."

[3] Commercial and Industrial Spain, by George Higgin, Mem. Inst. C. E., London, 1886.