That very advanced political opinions should be held here need hardly surprise us. We find the following Democratic clubs in existence: The Historic Republican Club (“Centro Republicano Historico”), the Possibilist Republican Club (“Circulo Republicano Possibilista”), the Democratic Progressist Club, the Federal Republican Club, and many others. When next a great popular movement takes place in Spain—and already the event looms in the distance—without doubt the first impulse will be given at Barcelona.
Electric lighting was early introduced here, a company being founded so long back as 1880, and having branches in the capital, Seville, Valencia, Bilbao, and other towns. The importance of Barcelona as a center of commerce is attested by the extraordinary number of banks. At every turn the stranger comes upon a bank. “Compared to the mighty hives of English industry and skill, here everything is petty,” wrote Ford, fifty years ago. Very different would be his verdict could he revisit the Manchester and Liverpool of Catalonia in our own day.
One curious feature of social life in Spain is the extraordinary number of religious fête days and public holidays. No Bank Holiday Act is needed, as in the neighboring country of France. Here is a list of days during which business is for the most part suspended in this recreation-loving city: Twelfth-cake Day is the great festival of the little ones—carnival is kept up, if with less of former splendor, nevertheless with much spirit; on Ash Wednesday rich and poor betake themselves to the country; Holy Thursday and Good Friday are celebrated with great pomp in the churches; on Easter Eve takes place a procession of shepherds in the park; Easter Monday is a day given up to rural festivity; the 19th of March St. José’s Day—is a universal fête, hardly a family in Spain without a José among its number. The first Sunday in May is a feast of flowers and poetic competitions; the days consecrated to St. Juan and St. Pedro are public holidays, patronized by enormous numbers of country-folks; All Saints’ and All Souls’ Days are given up, as we have seen, to alternate devotion and festivity. On the 20th of December is celebrated the Feast of the Nativity, the fair and the displays of the shops attracting strangers from all parts. But it is especially the days sacred to the Virgin that are celebrated by all classes. Balls, banquets, processions, miracle-plays, illuminations, bull-fights, horse-races, scholastic fêtes, industrial exhibitions, civic ceremonial, besides solemn services, occupy old and young, rich and poor. Feasting is the order of the day, and the confectioners’ windows are wonderful to behold.
Although many local customs are dying out, we may still see some of the curious street sights described by Ford fifty years ago, and the Mariolatry he deplored is still as active as ever. The goodly show of dainties in the shops, however, belie his somewhat acrimonious description of a Spanish reception. “Those who receive,” he wrote, “provide very little refreshment unless they wish to be covered with glory; space, light, and a little bad music, are sufficient to amuse these merry, easily-pleased souls, and satisfy their frugal bodies. To those who, by hospitality and entertainment, can only understand eating and drinking—food for man and beast—such hungry proceedings will be more honored in the breach than in the observance; but these matters depend much on latitude and longitude.” Be this as it may, either the climate of Barcelona has changed, or international communication has revolutionized Spanish digestion. Thirty years ago, when travelling in Spain, it was no unusual sight to see a spare, aristocratic hidalgo enter a restaurant, and, with much form and ceremony, breakfast off a tiny omelette. Nowadays we find plenty of Spanish guests at public ordinaries doing ample justice to a plentiful board. English visitors in a Spanish house will not only get good music, in addition to space and light, but abundant hospitality of material sort.
The Spain of which Ford wrote so humorously, and, it must be admitted, often so maliciously, is undergoing slow, but sure, transformation. Many national characteristics remain—the passion for the brutal bull-fight still disgraces a polished people, the women still spend the greater portion of their lives in church, religious intolerance at the beginning of the twentieth century must be laid to the charge of a slowly progressive nation. On the other hand, and nowhere is the fact more patent than at Barcelona, the great intellectual and social revolution, described by contemporary Spanish novelists, is bringing the peninsula in closer sympathy with her neighbors. Many young Spaniards, for instance, are now educated in England, English is freely spoken at Malaga, and its literature is no longer unknown to Spanish readers. These facts indicate coming change. The exclusiveness which has hitherto barred the progress of this richly-dowed and attractive country is on the wane. Who shall say? We may ere long see dark-eyed students from Barcelona at Girton College, and a Spanish society for the protection of animals prohibiting the torture of bulls and horses for the public pleasure.
Already—all honor to her name—a Spanish woman novelist, the gifted Caballero, has made pathetic appeals to her country-folks for a gentler treatment of animals in general. For the most part, it must be sadly confessed, in vain!
In spite of its foremost position, in intellectual and commercial pre-eminence, Barcelona has produced no famous men. Her noblest monument is raised to an alien; Lopez, a munificent citizen, honored by a statue, was born at Santander. Prim, although a Catalan, did not first see the light in the capital. By some strange concatenation of events, this noble city owes her fame rather to the collective genius and spirit of her children than to any one. A magnanimous stepmother, she has adopted those identified with her splendor to whom she did not herself give birth.
Balzac wittily remarks that the dinner is the barometer of the family purse in Paris. One perceives whether Parisians are flourishing or no by a glance at the daily board. Clothes afford a nice indication of temperature all the world over. We have only to notice what people wear, and we can construct a weather-chart for ourselves. Although the late autumn was, on the whole, favorable, I left fires, furs, and overcoats in Paris. At Lyons, a city afflicted with a climate the proper epithet of which is “muggy,” ladies had not yet discarded their summer clothes, and were only just beginning to refurbish felt hats and fur-lined pelisses.
At Montpellier the weather was April-like—mild, blowy, showery; waterproofs, goloshes, and umbrellas were the order of the day. On reaching Barcelona I found a blazing sun, windows thrown wide open, and everybody wearing the lightest garments. Such facts do duty for a thermometer.
Boasting, as it does of one of the finest climates in the world, natural position of rare beauty, a genial, cosmopolitan, and strikingly handsome population, and lastly, accessibility, Barcelona should undoubtedly be a health resort hardly second to Algiers. Why it is not, I will undertake to explain.