A Corner of Spain

by Walter Wood

From the day when they can support any burden at all the females of Galicia are taught that to them is given the conveyance of any article, however big and clumsy, which is not too big for a human being to grapple with. Nothing more astonishing can be seen in Galicia than the size and weight of some of the loads which the women carry on their heads, and frequently a woman hurries along under a burden which a Billingsgate or Covent Garden porter would refuse to have planted on his crown.

Galician women have a passion for consigning burdens to their heads. Size, shape, and weight are immaterial. The burden may be a bedstead, a coffin, a load of firewood or seaweed, an enormous trunk packed with baggage, a bucket of water, a huge basket of fish or vegetables, or some grotesque article which could be easily carried in the hand. Big or little, the method of conveyance is the same, a small protecting pad being put between the top of the head and the burden. A common, almost universal, way of preparing the pad is to take a handkerchief, usually a white one, from the pocket, roll it into a ring, and then put it on the crown of the head. The material prevents the hard basket, bucket, box, or other burden from being unduly felt, though many Galician women have bald spaces due to the wearing away of the hair by the circular pads. If the weight is not too heavy a woman will hoist it up herself, but the custom is to have the load lifted up and put in place.

There is a spirit of camaraderie in the burden-bearing, and frequently a woman who is hurrying along the street, flying light, will stop to hoist up a burden on to a fellow-creature's head. Small girls scurry along the pavement or roadway bearing weights that are out of all proportion to their strength and years, and to this early toil may be attributed the spoiling of Galician figures. The heavy weights and strain of carrying them cause the women to walk with a curious twisting movement of the hips, and to over-develop that part of the body; but as a rule the carriage of the Galician peasant woman is perfect, and many have remarkably fine figures. Some of the women appear to be enormously strong, and the great majority look healthy and happy. Even when near confinement they will continue their burden-bearing, and I was told that often a child will be born to a woman who has gone straight from her work, and that in an incredibly short time she will be at her task again. In this respect the Galician peasant seems to be fit sister to the Red Indian women, of whom it was said that they would fall out of the line of march, and having given birth to a son or daughter on the prairie, pick the infant up and overtake their companions.

Women in Galicia work in the houses, the fields, the quarries, on the road, on the water. You may see them driving bullock-carts, and pigs and cattle. I observed a tiny girl who could not be more than three years old piloting an enormous and fractious sow, weeping copiously as she did so because the stubborn pig refused to answer steering signals, which were smart thuds on her fat sides; women were helping men to pull a boat-load of seaweed up Vigo Bay; three women and one man outside Pontevedra were road-making with pickaxes; not far away from them other women were filling corves with coal, plying their shovels like navvies, and women were unloading a stone-laden sloop, tripping up a springy gangway with their stone-filled baskets on their heads, and hurrying down another plank for further loads. I saw women stripping the husks from maize, quarrying granite in the hills, working on hats and dresses, teaching in little wayside schools, tending the sick in hospital, and doing a hundred and one odd things many of which are carried out by women in Great Britain, but most of which fall only to the lot of men.

On inquiring into the rate of wages paid to women I was told that a female labourer gets sevenpence daily for her work, which lasts from sunrise to sunset, and she is as a rule supplied with wine and maize-bread, although in some places the bread has to be bought. In cold weather the women are given a little brandy. The wages seem small enough, but the cost of living is in proportion to the income. A little cottage may be had for a shilling a week, and although the dwelling is far from being a desirable human habitation from the English standpoint, still it is not worse in some respects than many of the appalling dens in which British labourers live.

A MAID OF CANGAS

Women appeared on the railway side at every level crossing when a train was passing, and, armed with a staff as badge of office, held up the traffic, vehicular and pedestrian. As a rule there was neither, but the conscientious female went through the solemn ceremony of standing sentry over the gate or chain which separated the single track from the highway until the train had passed, and then lowering the sign of authority and opening the gate or releasing the chain to indicate that carts and human beings were at liberty to cross the metals. Often enough this motherly protection was witnessed only by a dilapidated Spanish infant, who had nothing better to do than stroll down to the railway and watch the train go past.

These remarkable children are everywhere, and some of them are very pretty, and as shy as they are attractive. At the old bridge of Ramallosa I wished to take a photograph of a little Spanish maid who was hurrying towards me over the arches, but her coyness was unconquerable, and in spite of all allurements she refused to be a party to the picture, and at last turned and fled precipitately. At Cangas, on the north side of Vigo Bay, I craftily secured a shot at a beautiful maid who was hugging a fat and placid infant on the shore. Being only a few feet away, I feigned deep interest in a neighbouring sardine-boat, then, unexpectedly confronting the little nurse, so that she should not have time to pose, I secured her for the film. It was not until I strolled away that the subtlety of the performance struck her; then, for some reason best known to herself, she burst into screams of laughter. One of the charms of snapshots in Galicia is that the subjects are quite unconscious. They do not pose, because they do not understand.