Gatherings from Spain

by Richard Ford

THE FONDA.

First and foremost among these refuges for the destitute comes the fonda, the hotel. This, as the name implies, is a foreign thing, and was imported from Venice, which in its time was the Paris of Europe, the leader of sensual civilization, and the sink of every lie and iniquity. Its fondacco, in the same manner, served as a model for the Turkish fondack. The fonda is only to be found in the largest towns and principal seaports, where the presence of foreigners creates a demand and supports the establishment. To it frequently is attached a café, or “botilleriá,” a bottlery and a place for the sale of liqueurs, with a “neveria,” a snowery where ices and cakes are supplied. Men only, not horses, are taken in at a fonda; but there is generally a keeper of a stable or of a minor inn in the vicinity, to which the traveller’s animals are consigned. The fonda is tolerably furnished in reference to the common articles with which the sober unindulgent natives are contented: the traveller in his comparisons must never forget that Spain is not England, which too few ever can get out of their heads. Spain is Spain, a truism which cannot be too often repeated; and in its being Spain consists its originality, its raciness, its novelty, its idiosyncrasy, its best charm and interest, although the natives do not know it, and are every day, by a foolish aping of European civilization, paring away attractions, and getting commonplace, unlike themselves, and still more unlike their Gotho-Moro and most picturesque fathers and mothers. Monks, as we said in our preface, are gone, mantillas are going, the shadow of cotton versus corn has already darkened the sunny city of Figaro, and the end of all Spanish things is coming. Ay! de mi España!

Thus in Spain, and especially in the hotter provinces, it is heat and not cold which is the enemy: what we call furniture—carpets, rugs, curtains, and so forth—would be a positive nuisance, would keep out the cool, and harbour plagues of vermin beyond endurance. The walls of the apartments are frequently, though simply, whitewashed: the uneven brick floors are covered in winter with a matting made of the “esparto,” rush, and called an “estera,” as was done in our king’s palaces in the days of Elizabeth: a low iron or wooden truckle bedstead, with coarse but clean sheets and clothes, a few hard chairs, perhaps a stiff-backed, most uncomfortable sofa, and a rickety table or so, complete the scanty inventory. The charges are moderate; about two dollars, or 8s. 6d., per head a-day, includes lodging, breakfast, dinner, and supper. Servants, if Spanish, are usually charged the half; English servants, whom no wise person would take on the Continent, are nowhere more useless, or greater incumbrances, than in this hungry, thirsty, tealess, beerless, beefless land: they give more trouble, require more food and attention, and are ten times more discontented than their masters, who have poetry in their souls; an æsthetic love of travel, for its own sake, more than counterbalances with them the want of material gross comforts, about which their pudding-headed four-full-meals-a-day attendants are only thinking. Charges are higher at Madrid, and Barcelona, a great commercial city, where the hotels are appointed more European-like, in accommodation and prices. Those who remain any time in a large town bargain with the innkeeper, or go into a boarding-house, “casa de pupilos,” or “de huespedes,” where they have the best opportunity of learning the Spanish language, and of obtaining an idea of national manners and habits. This system is very common. The houses may be known externally by a white paper ticket attached to the extremity of one of the windows or balconies. This position must be noted; for if the paper be placed in the middle of the balcony, the signal means only that lodgings are here to be let. Their charges are very reasonable.

CHANGES IN SPANISH INNS.

Since the death of Ferdinand VII. marvellous improvements have taken place in some fondas. In the changes and chances of the multitudinous revolutions, all parties ruled in their rotation, and then either killed or banished their opponents. Thus royalists, liberals, patriots, moderates, &c., each in their turn, have been expatriated; and as the wheel of fortune and politics went round, many have returned to their beloved Spain from bitter exile in France and England. These travellers, in many cases, were sent abroad for the public good, since they were thus enabled to discover that some things were better managed on the other side of the water and Pyrenees. Then and there suspicion crossed their minds, although they seldom will admit it to a foreigner, that Spain was not altogether the richest, wisest, strongest, and first of nations, but that she might take a hint or two in a few trifles, among which perhaps the accommodations for man and beast might be included. The ingress, again, of foreigners by the facilities offered to travellers by the increased novelties of steamers, mails, and diligences necessarily called for more waiters and inns. Every day, therefore, the fermentation occasioned by the foreign leaven is going on; and if the national musto, or grape-juice, be not over-drugged with French brandy, something decent in smell and taste may yet be produced.

THE POSADA.

In the seaports and large towns on the Madrid roads the twilight of café and cuisine civilization is breaking from La belle France. Monastic darkness is dispelled, and the age of convents is giving way to that of kitchens, while the large spaces and ample accommodations of the suppressed monasteries suggest an easy transition into “first-rate establishments,” in which the occupants will probably pay more and pray less. News, indeed, have just arrived from Malaga, that certain ultra-civilized hotels are actually rising, to be defrayed by companies and engineered by English, who seem to be as essential in regulating these novelties on the Continent as in the matters of railroads and steamboats. Rooms are to be papered, brick floors to be exchanged for boards, carpets to be laid down, fireplaces to be made, and bells are to be hung, incredible as it may appear to all who remember Spain as it was. They will ring the knell of nationality; and we shall be much mistaken if the grim old Cid, when the first one is pulled at Burgos, does not answer it himself by knocking the innovator down. Nay, more, for wonders never cease; vague rumours are abroad that secret and solitary closets are contemplated, in which, by some magical mechanism, sudden waters are to gush forth; but this report, like others viâ Madrid and Paris telegraph, requires confirmation. Assuredly, the spirit of the Holy Inquisition, which still hovers over orthodox Spain, will long ward off these English heresies, which are rejected as too bad even by free-thinking France.

THE POSADA.

The genuine Spanish town inn is called the posada, as being meant to mean, a house of repose after the pains of travel. Strictly speaking, the keeper is only bound to provide lodging, salt, and the power of cooking whatever the traveller brings with him or can procure out of doors; and in this it diners from the fonda, in which meats and drinks are furnished. The posada ought only to be compared to its type, the khan of the East, and never to the inn of Europe. If foreigners, and especially Englishmen, would bear this in mind, they would save themselves a great deal of time, trouble, and disappointment, and not expose themselves by their loss of temper on the spot, or in their note-books. No Spaniard is ever put out at meeting with neither attention nor accommodation, although he maddens in a moment on other occasions at the slightest personal affront, for his blood boils without fire. He takes these things coolly, which colder-blooded foreigners seldom do. The native, like the Oriental, does not expect to find anything, and accordingly is never surprised at only getting what he brings with him. His surprise is reserved for those rare occasions when he finds anything actually ready, which he considers to be a godsend. As most travellers carry their provisions with them, the uncertainty of demand would prevent mine host from filling his larder with perishable commodities; and formerly, owing to absurd local privileges, he very often was not permitted to sell objects of consumption to travellers, because the lords or proprietors of the town or village had set up other shops, little monopolies of their own. These inconveniences sound worse on paper than in practice; for whenever laws are decidedly opposed to common sense and the public benefit, they are neutralized in practice; the means to elude them are soon discovered, and the innkeeper, if he has not the things by him himself, knows where to get them. On starting next day a sum is charged for lodging, service, and dressing the food: this is, called el ruido de casa, an indemnification to mine host for the noise, the disturbance, that the traveller is supposed to have created, which is the old Italian incommodo de la casa, the routing and inconveniencing of the house; and no word can be better chosen to express the varied and never-ceasing din of mules, muleteers, songs, dancing, and laughing, the dust, the row, which Spaniards, men as well as beasts, kick up. The English traveller, who will have to pay the most in purse and sleep for his noise, will often be the only quiet person in the house, and might claim indemnification for the injury done to his acoustic organs, on the principle of the Turkish soldier who forces his entertainer to pay him teeth-money, to compensate for the damage done to his molars and incisors from masticating indifferent rations.

SPANISH INNKEEPERS.