The very names of the people are taken from religion and the mysteries of religion in the same spirit with which they named their discoveries after Santa Cruz, San Domingo, San José, Trinidad. Among men’s Christian and surnames we continually find Jesu, Jesu Maria, Juan de Dios, Santa Cruz, Salvador; among the women, Concepcion, Dolores—a sweet name after the Mother of Sorrows, Maria de los Angeles, and the like.
The very streets and the public places are christened in the same way; and the ships baptized and launched with religious ceremonies, a custom that prevails also in France.
They preserve the old gospel use of the word woman. That is the title by which the husband addresses his wife as often as any other. She calls him hijo, son, or hombre, man. “Hija de mi alma,” daughter of my soul, is also very common. Ceremony is only employed with strangers; tu, thou, is the form in which intimate friends are always addressed. After becoming acquainted, you call the lady of the house and her daughters, whether grown up or young, by their maiden names simply. It is amusing to hear little ones who can scarcely lisp address each as señor and señora.
They have a fair supply of newspapers, and very able ones, in Spain; though, as usual, those that enjoy the widest circulation at present are devoted to the dissemination of false principles. They are cried out in the streets not by newsboys as with us, but principally by old blind men, who stand in the most public places with a tablet of the latest news on their breasts, and having got their lesson by rote spout away untiringly.
The club is becoming a very favorite institution, and is, in fact, the stronghold and rendezvous of political parties. There is a very famous one in Madrid, which numbers among its members such men as Castelar, Moret, and others. They meet sometimes for public discussion; and those great orators rise there to propound their theories as earnestly as in the Cortes.
They have a code of intercourse worthy of imitation. When a Spanish family takes up its quarters at a hotel or in a new place, the neighbors, though perfect strangers, call, leave their cards, and go away. If their acquaintance is desired, they are waited upon and conversation ensues; if not, the stranger simply returns his card in the same manner as the other was received; and no slight or grievance is felt or intended.
The amusements are various. Apart from the opera, theatre, and those common to all nations, they are very fond of an indoor game called volante, which is simply battledoor and shuttlecock; ladies and gentlemen play at it together. There is also a very favorite game of cards, tresillo, to which we have no equivalent. The climate compels the Spanish women to lead a more indoor life than with us. The men are fond of riding, hunting, and shooting. They sit as erect on horseback as statues; and the army officers are very fond of displaying the motions rather than the speed of their steeds. Mules are in great demand; for the roads in Spain, except in the neighborhood of the great towns, are very bad; mere bridle-paths most of them. Seated in a vehicle that would be a treasure in an art museum for antiquity, construction, and shape, with a team of six or eight of these animals to jolt you anywhere, is a position more than pleasant. The jingle of the little bells with which the harness is adorned, the cracking of the driver’s whip, the tones in which he endeavors to animate the vicious brutes, now cajoling them in accents that might win the heart of a maiden, again pouring forth a volley of imprecations on their heads and tails and pedigree, as though they were human, is a study. You can never trust these animals, and it is always the safer plan to give their hoofs what a sailor would call sea-room. An archbishop, passing along the streets one day, suddenly came upon a string of them, and as suddenly crossed to the other side of the street. “O Señor Arzobispo,” said the muleteer, “you need not be frightened. These are harmless animalitos.”
“Yes, I know they are harmless,” replied his grace, “and that is the reason I cross here; if they were not, I should go to the next street.”
This fact of the roads being so bad and the intercommunication so deficient, coupled with tales of brigandage, gives strangers the idea that travelling in Spain is very insecure. We might pass from end to end of the land, unknown and unarmed, with far greater safety than during a five minutes’ walk through many a street in New York or London after nightfall. We had an instance of brigandage and its treatment in Spain during Prim’s régime, a time when the country was as convulsed as at present. Encouraged, no doubt, by the lamentable success of a similar exploit in Greece, some miscreants carried off a merchant from Gibraltar, and demanded a round ransom as the forfeit of his life. Prim, without a moment’s hesitation as to the nice question of treating with brigands, or a thought of where the ransom was to come from, paid it, and sent four of the civil guard to follow up the robbers, which they did so successfully that they shot them all and retook their booty. We have not heard of brigandage since in Spain, notwithstanding the highly touched pictures presented, the other day, of an attack on a railway train, accompanied by smoke and powder, and brigands in the stage costume of centuries back.
This civil guard is an excellent institution. The body is recruited from the best ranks of the soldiery. It is a distinction to be admitted among them, which engenders an esprit de corps that makes them the terror of the wrong-doer and the right arm of order. We ourselves might take a lesson from the incident mentioned above, if we are to credit the reports of the Lowery gang.