Cathedral Cities of Spain

by W. W. Collins

I turned to my companion on the seat, he looked chilled despite the warmth of an April sun. "Tell me, sir, to whom does all the fine country of the Vega belong?" "Absent landlords, señor; they take their rents and they live in Madrid, and the poor man has no one to care for him." "But surely he begs and does not wish to work or to be cared for. The beggars in Granada are more numerous than in any place I know." "That is true, señor," and with a shake he relapsed into silence, drawing his capa closer around him. The turn the conversation had taken was not worth pursuing.

New buildings are superseding the old in Antequeruela, and poverty and squalor pushed further out of the sight of El Caballero, his Highness the tourist. Æsthetically we appreciate the picturesque side of poverty, the tumble-down houses, the rags, the graceful attitudes of the patient poor for ever shifting in the patches of sunlight as the great life-giver moves round. Dinner will be ready for us at 7 o'clock in the hotel, there would be no call to leave home if every town we came to was clean and its people prosperous. "But what about Los Pobres, the beggars?" you ask. "Are they really deserving of charity, or only lazy scoundrels?" I cannot answer you. I can only tell you that I have never seen such terrible emaciated bundles of rags as those I saw in Granada.

In Seville, though it is forbidden to beg, it was the one-eyed that predominated; in Cordova he of no legs, who having marked down his prey, displayed great agility as he scuttled across the street with the help of little wooden hand-rests; but here not only were both combined, but various horrors of crippled and disfigured humanity with open sores and loathsome disease thrust themselves before me wherever I went. It was disgusting—but oh! how picturesque! If only, my good Pobres, you would not come so close to me!

They say Spain is the one unspoilt country in Europe. Personally I think she is the one country that wants regenerating. Her girls are women at sixteen, old at thirty, and aged ten years later. Her men take life as it comes with very little initiative to better themselves. Very few display any energy. Their chief thoughts are woman, and how to pass the day at ease. Luckily for the country, at the age when good food and clean living helps to make men, her youth is invigorated by army service. True it is not popular. In the late war they died like flies through fever and ill-feeding, and many were the sad tales I heard of José and Pedro returning from the front with health ruined for life. It was a sad blow to Spain, that war. Her navy demolished and her colonies lost. It may be the regeneration of the nation, her well-wishers hope so, but it is a difficult thing to change the leopard's spots. The beggar being hungry begs, and well-nigh starves, his children follow his example and probably his great grandchildren will be in the same line of business a hundred years hence—Quien sabe? who knows?

I still sit in the sun rolling cigarettes; it is extraordinary how soon the custom becomes a habit, and think of all this. A string of donkeys passes with baskets stuffed tight with half a dozen large long-funnelled water cans. They have come in with fresh drinking water from the spring up the Darro under the Alhambra hill, and a little later the water-sellers will be offering glasses of the refreshingly cool contents of their cans. Granada is a city running with water, but the pollution from the drains and the never-ending ranks of women on their knees wrinsing clothes in its two streams, into which, by the way, all dead refuse is thrown, makes that which is fit to drink a purchasable quantity only.

I watch the peasants from the Vega, who come in with empty panniers slung across their donkeys, scraping up the dirt of the streets which they take away to fertilise their cottage gardens. Herds of goats go by muzzled until milking is over. They make for that bit of blank wall opposite, and stand licking the saline moisture which oozes from the plaster in the shade. The goats of Granada are reckoned the finest in Spain, and, as is the custom throughout Andalusia, graze in the early spring on the tender shoots of the young corn. This not only keeps them in food, but improves the quality of that part of the crop which reaches maturity. I could sit all day here if only the sun stood still. My companion removed himself half an hour ago and it is getting chilly in the shade, so up and on to the Cathedral.

What a huge Renaissance pile it is. Built on the Gothic plans of Diego de Siloe it is undoubtedly the most imposing edifice of this style in Spain. Fergusson considers its plan makes it one of the finest churches in Europe. The western façade was erected by Alonso Cano and José Granados, and does not follow Siloe's original design. The name of the sculptor-painter is writ in big letters throughout the building. To him are due the colossal heads of Adam and Eve, let into recesses above the High Altar, and the seven pictures of the Annunciation, Conception, Presentation in the Temple, Visitation, Purification and Assumption in the Capilla Mayor. The two very fine colossal figures, bronze gilt, which stand above the over-elaborated pulpits; a couple of beautiful miniatures on copper in the Capilla de la Trinidad; a fine Christ bearing the Cross and a head of S. Pedro over the altar of Jesus Nazareno, are also by Cano. Many other examples from his carving tools and brush are to be found in the Cathedral, of which he was made a "Racione" or minor Canon, after fleeing from Valladolid when accused of the murder of his wife. The little room he used as a workshop in the Great Tower may still be visited and his remains lie tranquilly beneath the floor of the coro.

In the Capilla de la Antigua there is that curious little image which, found in a cave, served Ferdinand as a battle banner; and also contemporary (?) portraits of the King and his Queen.