Wanderings in Spain

by Théophile Gautier

It was eleven o'clock when we entered Valez-Malaga; the windows were joyfully lighted up, and the streets re-echoed with songs and the sounds of guitars. The young maidens seated in the balconies were singing verses which the novios accompanied from the street below, and each stanza was followed by laughter, shouts, and applause, which I thought would never end. Other groups were dancing the cachucha, the fandango, and the jalo, at the corners of the streets. The guitars emitted a dull hum like that of bees, the castagnettes rattled merrily, and all was music and delight. It would almost appear as if the most important business of a Spaniard's life were pleasure; he gives himself up to it, heart and soul, with admirable ease and frankness. No nation in the world appears to know less of misfortune than the Spaniards, and a stranger travelling through the Peninsula can scarcely believe that the state of political affairs can be so serious, or that he is traversing a country which for ten years has been ravaged and laid waste by civil war. Our peasants are far from possessing the happy carelessness, the joyful look, and the elegant costume of the Andalusian majos, and in the matter of education they are greatly inferior to them. Almost all the Spanish peasants can write; their minds are stored with poetry, which they recite or sing without destroying the measure; they are good horsemen, and very dexterous in the use of the knife and carbine. It is true that the admirable fertility of the soil and the beauty of the climate relieves them from the necessity of that brutalizing work, which, in less favoured countries, reduces man to the condition of a beast of burden or a machine, and robs him of those two gifts of heaven, force and beauty.

It was not without a feeling of the profoundest satisfaction, that I tied my mule to the bars of the posada.

Our supper was extremely frugal; all the servants, both male and female, were gone out to dance, so that we had to content ourselves with a simple gaspacho. The gaspacho is worthy of a particular description, and we will therefore give our readers the receipt for making it—a receipt which would have caused the late Brillat-Savarin's hair to stand on end with horror. You first pour some water into a soup-tureen; to this water you then add a small quantity of vinegar, some cloves of garlic, some onions cut into quarters, some sliced cucumber, a little pimento, and a pinch of salt. You then cut some slices of bread and let them soak in this agreeable compound, which is served up cold. In France, a dog with the least pretensions to a good education would refuse to compromise himself by putting his nose into such a mixture; but it is the favourite dish of the Andalusians, and the most lovely women do not hesitate of an evening, to swallow large messes of this diabolical soup. The gaspacho is considered very refreshing, an opinion which struck us, allowing scope for some diversity of opinion; yet, strange as the mixture appears the first time you taste it, you gradually grow accustomed to it, and, ultimately, even like it. By a providential chance we had, to enable us to wash down this meagre repast, a large decanterful of excellent dry white Malaga, which we conscientiously finished to the last pearly drop, and which restored our strength, that was completely exhausted by a ride of nine hours, over the most improbable roads, and in a temperature like that of a limekiln.

At three o'clock the conveyance set out once more upon its march. The sky looked lowering; a warm mist hung over the horizon, and the humidity of the air warned us that we were approaching the sea, which soon afterwards appeared in the extreme distance like a streak of hard blue. A few fleecy flakes of foam were visible here and there, while the waves came and died away in regular volutes upon the sand, which was as fine as boxwood sawdust. High cliffs rose upon our right. At one moment the rocks separated and left us a free passage, and at the next they barricaded the road, and obliged us to wind slowly round them. It is not often that Spanish roads proceed in a right line; it would be so difficult a task to overcome the various obstacles, that it is far better to go round than to surmount them. The famous motto, Linea recta brevissima, would in Spain be completely false.

The rising sun dispersed the mist as if it had been so much smoke; the sky and the sea recommenced their azure struggle, in which it is impossible to say which of the two is victorious; the cliffs reassumed their varied tints of reddish-brown, shot-colour, amethyst, and burnt topaz; the sand began once again to rise in small thin clouds, and the water to glisten in the intensity of the sunshine. Far, far away, almost on the line of the horizon, the sails of five fishing-boats palpitated in the wind like the wings of a dove.

The declivities now became less steep; from time to time, a little house appeared, as white as lump-sugar, with a flat roof, and a kind of peristyle formed by a vine clustering over trellis-work, supported at each end by a square pillar, and in the middle by a massive pylone, that presented quite an Egyptian appearance. The aguardiente stores became more numerous; they were still built of reeds, but they were more natty, and boasted of whitewashed counters daubed with a few streaks of red. The road, which was now distinctly marked out, began to be lined on each side with a line of cactus and aloe-trees, broken now and then by gardens and houses, before which women were mending nets, and children, completely naked, playing about. On seeing us pass by on our mules, they cried out, "Toro! Toro!" taking us, on account of our majo costume, for proprietors of ganaderias, or for the toreros belonging to the quadrille directed by Montes.

Carts drawn by oxen and strings of asses now followed at shorter intervals, and the bustle which invariably marks the neighbourhood of a large town became every moment more apparent. On all sides, convoys of mules, carrying persons who were on their way to witness the opening of the circus, made their appearance: we met a great number in the mountains coming from a distance of thirty or forty leagues. The aficionados are as superior, by their passionate and furious love of their favourite amusement, to our dilettanti, as the interest excited by a bull-fight is superior to that produced by the representation of an opera: nothing stops them; neither the heat, nor the difficulty or danger of the journey; provided they reach their destination and obtain a place near the barrera, from which they can pat the bull on the back, they consider themselves amply repaid for whatever fatigue they may have undergone. What tragic or comic author can boast of possessing such powers of attraction? This, however, does not prevent a set of namby-pamby sentimental authors from pretending that the taste for this barbarous amusement, as they term it, is every day gradually dying away in Spain.

It is impossible to conceive anything more picturesque and strange than the environs of Malaga. You appear to be transported to Africa: the dazzling whiteness of the houses, the deep indigo colour of the sea, and the overpowering intensity of the sun, all combine to keep up the illusion. On each side of the road are numbers of enormous aloe-trees, bristling up and waving their leafy cutlasses, and gigantic cactuses with their green broad foliage and misshapen trunks, writhing hideously like monstrous boa-constrictors, or resembling the backbones of so many stranded whales; while here and there a palm-tree shoots up like a column, displaying its green capital by the side of some tree of European parentage, which seems surprised at such a neighbour, and alarmed at seeing the formidable vegetation of Africa crawling at its feet.

An elegant white tower now stood out upon the blue sky behind; it was the Malaga lighthouse; we had reached our destination. It was about eight o'clock in the morning; the town was already alive and stirring: the sailors were passing and re-passing, loading and unloading the vessels anchored in the port, and displaying a degree of animation which was something uncommon in a Spanish town; the women, with their heads and figures enveloped in large scarlet shawls, which suited their Moorish faces most marvellously, were walking quickly along, and dragging after them some brat, who was entirely naked, or who had only got on a shirt. The men, with their cloaks thrown round them, or their jackets cast over their shoulders, hurried on their way; and it is a curious fact, that all this crowd was proceeding in the same direction,—that is, towards the Plaza de Toros. What struck me most, however, in this multicoloured concourse of people, was the sight of the negro galley-slaves, dragging a cart. They were of gigantic stature, with such monstrously savage faces, possessing so little of anything human, and stamped with such an expression of ferocious brutality, that on beholding them I stopped motionless with horror, as if they had been a team of tigers. The kind of linen robe which constituted their dress rendered their appearance still more diabolical and fantastic. I do not know what crime had brought them to the galleys; but I should certainly have sent them there merely because they were villains enough to have such faces.