Wanderings in Spain

by Théophile Gautier

This is the gayest and most lively part of the day at Granada. The shops of the aguadores and sellers of ices in the open street are illuminated by a multitude of lamps and lanterns; the street lamps and the lights placed before the images of the madonnas vie in splendour and number with the stars, and this is saying something: if it happens to be moonlight, you can easily see to read the most microscopical print. The light is blue instead of being yellow, and that is all.

Thanks to the lady who had saved me from dying of hunger in the diligence, and who introduced us to several of her friends, we were soon well known in Granada. We led a delicious life there. It would be impossible to receive a more cordial, frank, and amiable welcome than we did; at the end of five or six days we were on the most intimate terms with every one, and according to the Spanish custom, we were always called by our Christian names; at Granada I was Don Teofilo, my friend gloried in the appellation of Don Eugenio, and we were both at liberty to designate the ladies and young girls of the houses in which we were received, by the familiar names of Carmen, Teresa, Gala, &c.; this familiarity clashes in no way with the most polished manners and the most respectful attention.

We went to tertulia every evening from eight o'clock till twelve; to-day at one house, to-morrow at another. The tertulia is held in the patio, surrounded by alabaster columns and ornamented by a jet of water, the basin of which is encircled with pots of flowers and boxes of shrubs, down whose leaves the water falls in large beads. Five or six lamps are hung up along the walls: sofas, and straw or cane-bottomed chairs furnish the galleries, with here and there a guitar. The piano occupies one corner, and in another stand card-tables. Every one, on entering, goes to pay his compliments to the mistress and master of the house, who never fail to offer you a cup of chocolate, that good taste tells you to refuse, and a cigarette, which is sometimes accepted. When this duty is over, you retire to a corner of the patio, and join the group which has most attraction for you. The parents and old people play at trecillo, the young men talk with the young girls, recite the octaves and the decastichs they have composed during the day, and are scolded and forced to do penance for the crimes they may have committed the evening before; such, for instance, as having danced too often with a pretty cousin, or cast too ardent a glance towards a proscribed balcony, with numerous other peccadilloes. If, on the contrary, they have been very good, they are rewarded for the rose they have brought with the pink in the young girls' breast or hair, and their squeeze of the hand is replied to by a gentle look and a slight pressure of the fingers, when all go up into the balcony to listen to the Retreat beaten by the troops. Love seems to be the sole business of Granada. You have only to speak two or three times to a young girl, and the entire city immediately declare you to be novio and novia,—that is, affianced, and make a thousand innocent jokes about the passion they have invented for you; which jokes, innocent though they be, do not fail, however, to make you somewhat uneasy, by bringing visions of conjugal life before your eyes. All this gallantry is, however, more apparent than real; in spite of languishing glances, burning looks, tender or impassioned conversations, pretty little shortenings of your name, and the querido (beloved) with which it is preceded, you must not conceive any too flattering ideas. A Frenchman to whom a woman of the world were to say the quarter of what a young Granadian girl says to one of her numerous novios, without the least importance being attached to it, would think himself already in Paradise; but he would soon find his mistake, for if he became too bold, he would be instantly called to order, and summoned to state his matrimonial intentions before the nearest relatives. This honest liberty of language, so far removed from the forced and artificial manners of the nations of the north, is preferable to hypocrisy of speech, which always hides, at bottom, some coarse thought or other. At Granada, to pay attentions to a married woman seems quite extraordinary; while nothing appears more natural there than to pay court to a young girl. It is the contrary in France: no one ever addresses, there, a word to young, unmarried ladies, and this is what so often renders marriages unhappy. In Spain, a novio sees his novia two or three times a day, speaks to her without witnesses, accompanies her in her walks, and comes to talk with her in the evening through the bars of the balcony, or the window of the ground-floor. He thus has time to become acquainted with her, to study her character, and does not buy, as the saying is, a pig in a poke.

When the conversation flags, one of the gentlemen takes down a guitar, and, scratching the cords with his nails and keeping time with the palm of his hand on the centre of the instrument, begins to sing some gay Andalusian song or some comic couplet, interspersed with Ay! and Ola! curiously modulated and productive of a very singular effect. Then a lady sits down to the piano, and plays a morceau from Bellini, who appears to be the favourite maestro of the Spaniards, or sings a romance of Breton de los Herreros, the great versifier of Madrid. The evening is terminated by a little extempore ball, at which, alas! they dance neither jota, nor fandango, nor bolero, these dances being abandoned to peasants, servants, and gipsies; but they dance quadrilles, rigadoons, and sometimes they waltz. At our request, however, two young ladies of the house volunteered to execute the bolero one evening; but, before they commenced, they took care to close the door and windows of the patio, which are generally left open, so afraid were they of being accused of bad taste and local colouring. In general, the Spaniards grow angry on being spoken to of cachuchas, castanets, majos, manolas, monks, smugglers, and bull-fights, though they have, in reality, a great liking for all these things, so truly national and characteristic. They ask you, with an air of apparent vexation, if you do not think that they are as far advanced in civilization as yourself? To such an extent has the deplorable mania of imitating everything, French or English, penetrated everywhere! At present, Spain represents the Voltaire-Touquet system and the Constitutionnel of 1825; that is, it is hostile to all colouring and to all poetry. Be it remembered, however, that we are only speaking of the self-styled enlightened class inhabiting the cities.

As soon as the quadrilles are over, you take your leave by saying, "A los pies de vd." to the lady of the house, and "Beso à vd. la mano" to her husband; to which they reply, "Buenas noches," and "Beso à vd. la suya:" and then again on the threshold, as a last adieu, "Hasta mañana" (till to-morrow); which is an invitation to return. In spite of their familiar ways, the people of even the lower classes, the peasants and vagrants, make use towards one another of the most exquisite urbanity, which forms a strong contrast with the uncouthness of our own rabble. It is true that a stab might be the result of an offensive expression, and this is certainly one way of making all interlocutors use a good deal of circumspection. It is worthy of remark that French politeness, formerly proverbial, has disappeared since swords have ceased to be worn. The laws against duelling will end by making us the rudest nation in the world.

On returning home, you meet, under the windows and balconies, numbers of young gallants enveloped in their hooded cloaks, and staying there to pelar la paba (pluck the turkey), that is, to talk with their novias through the bars. These nocturnal conversations often last till two or three o'clock in the morning, which is nothing astonishing, since the Spaniards spend a part of the day in sleep. You sometimes tumble also on a serenade composed of three or four musicians, but more generally of the sighing swain only, who sings couplets as he accompanies himself on the guitar, with his sombrero drawn over his eyes, and his feet resting on a stone or a step. Formerly two serenades in the same street would not have been tolerated. The first comer claimed the right of remaining there alone, and forbade every other guitar, except his own, to tinkle in silence of the night. Such pretensions were maintained at the point of the sword, or by the knife, unless the patrol happened to be passing. In this case the two rivals coalesced, in order to charge the patrol, with the understanding that they were to renew their own private combat by and by. The susceptibility of serenaders has greatly diminished, and every one can at present tranquilly rascar el jamon (scrape the ham) under the window of his mistress.

If the night is dark you must take care not to put your foot into the stomach of some honourable hidalgo, rolled up in his mantle, which serves him for garment, bed, and house. During the summer nights the granite steps of the theatre are covered with a mass of blackguards who have no other place to go to. Each of them has his particular step, which serves as his apartment, where he is always sure to be found. They sleep there under the blue vault of heaven, with the stars for night lights, with no bugs to annoy them, and defy the sting of the mosquito by the coriaceous nature of their tanned skin, which is bronzed by the fiery sun of Andalusia, and certainly quite as dark as that of the darkest mulattoes.

The following is, without much variation, the life we led. The morning was devoted to visiting different parts of the city, to a walk to the Alhambra or the Generalife; we then went, of necessity, to call on the ladies at whose houses we had passed the previous evening. When we called but twice a day they told us we were ungrateful, and received us with so much kindness that we came to the conclusion that we really were fierce savage beings, and extremely negligent.

Our passion for the Alhambra was such that, not satisfied with visiting it every day, we were desirous of altogether taking up our abode there; not, however, in the neighbouring houses, which are let at very high prices to the English, but in the palace itself; and, thanks to the interest of our Granadian friends, the authorities, without giving us formal permission, promised not to perceive us. We remained there four days and four nights, which constituted, without any doubt, the happiest moments of my existence.

In order to reach the Alhambra, we will pass, if you please, through the square of the Vivarambla, where Gazal, the valiant Moor, used to hunt the bull, and where the houses, with their wooden balconies and miradores, present a vague appearance of so many hen-coops. The fish-market occupies one corner of the square, the middle of which forms an open space, surrounded with stone seats, peopled with money-changers, vendors of alcarrazas, earthen pots, water melons, mercery, ballads, knives, chaplets, and other little articles that can be sold in the open air. The Zacatin, which has preserved its picturesque name, connects the Vivarambla with the Plaza Nueva. It is in this street, bordered by lateral lanes, and covered with canvass tendidos, that all the commerce of Granada moves and buzzes; hatters, tailors, and shoemakers, lacemen and cloth merchants, occupy nearly all the shops, which possess as yet nothing of the improvements of modern art, and remind you of the old pillars of the Paris markets.