A peculiarity of service in Galician public dining-rooms is the piling up of plates before you. The stack is gradually lessened as you get through the courses. Free use may be made of your private cutlery to help yourself to salt and pepper, after the custom of the Continent. The wine is placed on the table either in bottles or decanters. There is a tendency to tire of the wine and crave for English beer. This is obtainable in the principal hotels and cafés, but only at a heavy charge, a bottle of ale costing more than a bottle of ordinary wine. Being specially brewed for export, the beer is not equal to the article which is bought at home. Very good Spanish lager can be had, especially in Vigo, at the bar in the Calle Velazquez Moreno, opposite the post and telegraph office. At that place, also, excellent afternoon tea is served. To my regret and financial loss, I did not discover this welcome retreat until two or three days before the Antony bore me from Galicia.
By the time déjeuner is served the waiter has become himself. He has assumed a collar and a dinner-jacket, and bustles round with every wish to please his customers. He takes a real interest in them, and, given proper treatment and consideration, there is no trouble to which he will not go to meet an expressed or implied wish. He can be led like a lamb, but if any sign is shown of driving him he displays the mule's unpleasant attributes. I remember that at one hotel, into the dining-room of which I wandered early in the mornings, an elderly waiter, coatless and collarless, with a soiled napkin over his arm, ignored my existence for a day or two. He was performing the task of a frotteur, skating, in melancholy, meditative fashion, over the polished wooden floor, with a rag-bundle on his right foot. He would slide past with an air of almost grotesque seriousness, so intent on his work that he failed to see me; at least that was the impression made on my mind. Commands in ordinary English to produce some breakfast failed to move him; yet when, in due course, on entering the room, I greeted him as a man, a brother, and especially a caballero, he skated elegantly to the mysterious region where the coffee was prepared, and ceremoniously produced not only coffee and rolls, but also butter. One morning I desired Rocquefort—to his polite but palpable amazement—and thereafter he conceived that no British breakfast was complete without the cheese concomitant. At this hotel the butter was very good—a native product with a cheesy flavour; in other hotels Danish butter in tins was provided. Galicia can produce first-rate butter, yet the Gallegans go to Denmark for the article, and bring it over land or sea—or both—in tins. One of the remarkable things about Galicia is that although the country is so productive, still in many cases there are no adequate systems of making the most of natural resources.
A great change, however, is taking place, and some of the richest and most enterprising public men in North-West Spain are devoting themselves with enthusiastic zeal to the task of awakening the people and making them realise the immense possibilities of the province. Energetic measures for development are being taken by the Asociación para el Fomento del Turismo en Galicia, of which prominent members are Messrs. Miguel Fernandez Lema, ex-Lord Mayor of Vigo; Manuel Olivie, the Town Clerk, who is a well-known author; Eladio de Lema, Director, El Faro de Vigo; Jaime Solar, Director, Noticiero de Vigo and Vida Gallega; Manuel Borrajo, President, Asociación de Cultura; Angel Bernandez, writer and secretary of the Asociación Fomento Turismo; Guillermo de Oya, President of the Asociación, and Dr. Ildefonso Zabaleta, Medical Officer of Health for Vigo Harbour. Mr. Frederico Barreras Masso, one of Vigo's most distinguished citizens, is doing much to bring Galicia into closer union with Great Britain, and all these efforts are being zealously fostered and supported by residents like Mr. Ricardo Rodriguez Pastor, of Corunna; Mr. Thomas Guyatt, the British Vice-Consul at Corunna; and Mr. R. Walker, the British Vice-Consul at Villa Garcia.
Most of Galicia's business is transacted in the open air, and much of it concerns the handling of live stock. In the larger towns, like Santiago, there is a weekly cattle market, where dealers and peasants assemble from the surrounding country, travelling by diligence, bullock-cart, pony, mule, or on foot, and making a wonderful congregation of human beings, from the pure gipsy type to the thorough Gallegan. Girls and women are everywhere, driving cattle, carrying great round baskets crammed with fowls, which are kept quiet and in place because their legs are tied, or piloting pigs. Native swine are not amenable to discipline, and the custom is to tie a rope or piece of string to one of the hind legs and let the beast go ahead. In the market the squealing animals are imprisoned by this method. Sometimes a quicker system is adopted—that of conveying pigs in sacks slung pannier-wise across the back of a mule or pony. This practice does not apply to full-grown animals; it is the smaller fry that are subjected to the indignity.
A CATTLE MARKET
AN OPEN-AIR MARKET
At Santiago market a peasant drove a mule past me with two sacks from the depths of which came muffled screams. He shook the sacks, and from each a little pig was shot to the ground, uttering piercing squeals, then, after the hind leg had been secured, settling into a continuous grunt of protest. Bargaining and wrangling were going on all round me, to the accompaniment of choruses of squeals and grunts, crowing of cocks, cackling of hens, and lowing of cattle. Business was conducted on simple lines—prodding of pigs' ribs, examining of oxen's mouths and other points, and lifting and calculating the weight and general promise of table and laying birds. Prices having been arranged, payment was made; and I was surprised to see how many fat silver dollars were poured from ancient purses and money-bags by peasants whose appearance conveyed the impression that they were almost destitute. Pontevedra is a great cattle centre, and enormous markets are held there two or three times a year. Herds of cattle monopolise the roads at these seasons, making motoring and driving a slow and laborious business.
This universal open-air life is in marked contrast to the dark and unwholesome dwellings of the lower classes in Galicia. The cottages in the country districts are in many cases mere hovels of the most primitive type, often enough without windows and admitting light only by the doorway. Fowls and quadrupeds share the establishments with their owners, and pigs grunt joyously in the room where the master and mistress and children take their rest—frequently on a bed as crude and dirty as that on which the porkers sleep. In this respect the Gallegan peasant somewhat resembles his prototype who is found in country places in Ireland which are remote from towns. In the principal centres of population, however, the people are much better housed and the municipalities exercise a far more rigid sanitary supervision.