Xeres de la Frontera (64,000), situated about thirty miles from Cadiz, surrounded by vineyards, is a city of Bodegas, or wine-cellars, the principal of which, as well as of the vineyards, are in the hands of foreigners. It is one of the busiest of Spanish commercial towns, and, like Barcelona, is on that account less peculiarly Spanish than many others. The exportation of sherry wines from the district, and those shipped at Port St. Mary, amounted, in 1873, to 98,924 butts; 1874, 65,365 butts; from Jerez alone, in 1875, 43,727 butts; 1876, 42,272 butts; 1877, 41,660 butts; 87 per cent, of which goes to Great Britain and her colonies. The decrease in later years is probably caused by the greater amount of lighter French wines now consumed in England. San Lucar de Barrameda (22,000), at the mouth of the Guadalquiver, is noted for its winter-gardens, which are said to date from Moorish times, and which supply Cadiz and Seville with their earliest fruits and vegetables. From its vineyards, too, comes the stomachic Manzanilla sherry, flavoured with the wild camomile, which grows abundantly in its vineyards. Arcos (12,000), on the Guadalete, is the only other Spanish town of importance in the province; but to the south lies the isolated rock and fortress of Gibraltar (25,000), captured by the Earl of Peterborough in 1704. Though held only as an English garrison (5000), and made almost impregnable as a fortress, it is yet of considerable commerce from its position as a port of call for vessels passing the Straits of Gibraltar, and also from its contraband trade with Spain, which is a source of constant irritation between the two nations. In natural history, it is remarkable for its apes (macacus inuus), as the only spot in Europe where any species of monkey lives, and it is doubtful whether even these would survive without the aid of occasional importations from Morocco.
Seville is the typical province of Andalusia, and its city of 133,000 ranks fourth in population of the cities of Spain. The Moors have left deeper outward traces at Granada, but here they have fused more thoroughly with the population, and have given it the Oriental grace and culture which is lacking in the former place; their wit belongs to themselves. Seville is peculiarly the home of Spanish art; the greatest of her painters, Murillo and Velasquez, were born there, and Zurbaran painted his best pieces to adorn her walls. Her writers are scarcely less noted. The most celebrated novelist of modern Spain, Cecilia Bohl de Faber (Fernan Caballero), had her home there. There Amador de los Rios composed his chief works. The Becquers—both the painter and the novelist—were born there. It is a city of predilection for all of artistic tastes. The Giralda, a tower of Moorish architecture, rivals, if it does not surpass, in its exquisite proportions the campanille of Italian art. The Alcazar is a home of beauty. The patios, or inner courts, of many of the houses have remains of Moorish decoration. The Cathedral shows that Christian lags not far behind Moslem architecture. But Seville, on the Guadalquiver, is not a mere city of pleasure. Like Paris, its gay exterior contains a great deal of real work and commerce within. Since the invention of steam, allowing sea-going vessels to breast with ease the current of the Guadalquiver, it has drawn to itself a great deal of the traffic which formerly passed through the harbours of the Bay of Cadiz. The tonnage of its shipping amounts to about 120,000 tons, and the value of its imports to over 2,000,000l., and of its exports to 1,750,000l., one-half of which belongs to Great Britain. Among its manufactories, one of porcelain, carried on by a British company, but employing Spanish methods, is celebrated; and its tobacco manufactory, with its 1000 women workers, is the largest government establishment of the kind in Spain. The city long enjoyed almost a monopoly of West Indian and of Manilla productions; the wealth brought by the galleons was deposited here, and here are still preserved the "Archivos de las Indias." It possesses both a university and a mint. The lower part of the Guadalquiver runs through marshy lands, which in places present almost impenetrable jungles. In these are bred the bulls which supply the bull-fights with their victims, and which make Seville the great school of tauromachia in Spain. The finest Andalusian horses are also produced in this province, and the wines, though not equal to those of the neighbouring provinces of Cadiz and Cordova, are still highly esteemed. Besides Seville, the chief towns are Ecija (24,000) on the Jenil, a place of large trade; Carmona (18,000); Ossuna (16,000). Utrera, Lebriga, and Marchena would be considerable towns in other provinces, but we can only indicate them here. From the absence of mountains Seville has not the mineral wealth of some other provinces, but coal is worked at Villanueva del Rio, and the copper-mines at Arnalcollar yield 20,000 tons of ore; other outlying deposits of the Huelva beds are found in this province, and a great part of the lead from the Linares mines is shipped here.
Huelva, the last maritime province of Spain, conterminous with Portugal on the west and with Seville on the east, with its capital of 10,000, is one of the richest mining districts in Europe. Worked in prehistoric times, and in the mythical dawn of history, by Iberians, Phœnicians, Carthaginians, and Romans, the mines of Tharsis and of the Rio Tinto were strangely neglected by the Spaniards until purchased by an Anglo-German company in 1873 for 3,850,000l., but with the certainty of a rich return. There are now over 7000 men employed by this company, and 906,600 tons of copper ore were extracted in 1879 from the south lode only; about 10,000 tons of hematite iron were also sold. The mines contain sulphur, copper, iron, and silver. In fact, the mountains round the source of the Tinto seem to be almost one mass of mineral ore. From the working of these mines the development of the riches of this province has been most rapid of late years, and the tonnage of shipping from the port of Huelva will probably soon rival, if not surpass, that of Cadiz: in 1873 the foreign shipping was 180,000 tons; this had ascended to over 300,000 tons in 1877. The imports were valued in 1873 at 168,000l., of which 112,000l. were British; and in 1877 to over 300,000, of which not quite one-half was British. The exports are of far greater importance, ranging from 750,000l. in 1873, of which 667,000l. were British, to 1,236,243l. in 1877, of which 1,132,782l. went to Great Britain. Except in minerals, the province is not rich; but a trade which will probably increase, has lately sprung up in wines, fruits, and cork. The frontier stream the Guadiana is of little use to Spain, and the little port of Palos, whence Columbus set out to give a new world to Spain, is now completely silted up.
Cordova.—The interior provinces of Andalusia are Cordova and Jaen, both on the Guadalquiver, the latter embracing the sources and upper part of the course, the former the central portion before it enters the province of Seville. The northern part of the province of Cordova is covered by parallel ranges of low mountains running east and west—the Sierras de Cordova and de Pedroches within the province, and the Sierras de Almaden and Morena, which form the boundary of Castile. Cordova, the capital, contains now but 49,000 inhabitants in place of the 1,000,000 who dwelt there when it was the seat of the western khalifat. Its mosque, almost the sole remnant of its former splendour, with its 1200 columns, is to Islam what the temple of Karnac at Thebes, and that of Karnac in Brittany, with their 100 pillars, are to the religions of Egypt and of prehistoric Europe. It is perhaps the grandest building for worship ever raised by Moslem hands; its materials were pillaged without scruple from shrines of older civilizations, but were wrought into new and fairer forms of beauty by the magic of Arabian art. As a Christian city, Cordova is of only second rank. It is chiefly noted for its leather work, and for its commerce in wines and fruits. It is to Cordova that the Amontillada sherry—the most prized of Spanish wines—comes, from the vineyards round Montilla (15,000). The only other town of importance in the province is Lucena (16,000), to the south.
Jaen, like Huelva, at the opposite extremity of Andalusia, is a mining province, and like those of Huelva its mines are chiefly in the hands of Englishmen and of foreigners. Linares (36,000), north of the Guadalquiver, is the centre of the mining district, and is far the most populous town in the province. Nearly 11,000 men, women, and boys were employed in the lead-mines in 1877, and the ore raised amounted to 70,000 tons. It has been calculated that the production of the world is about 300,000 tons of lead, of which Spain furnishes 100,000 tons and the United Kingdom 100,000 tons. The capital, Jaen, south of the great river, has only 24,000 inhabitants; Ubeda and Baza, close together, a little south of Jaen, have each 15,000. Andujar (11,000), with its old bridge over the Guadalquiver, is noted for its porous pottery, the cooling water-jars used throughout the whole of Southern Spain. In the north of this province is the celebrated Pass of Despeña-perros, through the Sierra Morena, one of the wildest gorges through which the traveller passes in any part of Europe; a few miles to the south of it is Las Navas de Tolosa, the field of the battle in 1212 which first proved how fast the power of the Moors was waning in Southern Spain.
ESTREMADURA, conterminous on the west with Portugal and on the south with Huelva, is the wildest and least peopled of all the provinces of Spain, and has been almost sufficiently described in a former chapter. It is divided into the two modern provinces of Badajoz and Caceres, through which run respectively the two rivers, the Guadiana and the Tagus. Desolate as it is now, the numerous Roman remains at Merida (6000) and Trajan's mighty bridge at Alcantara tell what it was in Roman times; but in Moorish days it suffered more from war than any other province, and the curse, the "mesta," the only means the Christian conquerors had of utilizing their vast and thinly-peopled properties, has ever since rested upon it. Besides its flocks and herds its chief wealth consists in acorns and bark for tanning, and cork for other purposes. The rivers run in deep gorges, almost cañons, and are useless for either navigation or for irrigation. Badajoz (22,000), on the Guadiana, one of the frontier fortresses of Spain towards Portugal, is by far the largest city. Higher up the river are Merida and Medellin, but Don Benito (15,000) is of greater commercial importance than either.
Caceres, a province still more thinly peopled than Badajoz, having only fifteen inhabitants instead of nineteen to the square kilometre, has 12,000 for its chief town; Plasencia, on the Xerte, an affluent of the Alagon, has only half that number. In the north-east of this province, on the southern spurs of the lofty Sierra de Gredos, stands the monastery San Juste, to which the Emperor Charles V. retired on his resignation of his many crowns. The shepherds of Estremadura, notwithstanding the scanty population, gave numbers of emigrants to the New World; Cortez and Pizarro were swineherds, the one of Medellin, the other of Truxillo. The town of Alcantara gives its name to one of the three great military orders of Spain.
NEW CASTILE and LA MANCHA comprise the five modern provinces of Ciudad Real, Toledo, Madrid, Cuenca, and Guadalajara, which all take their names from their chief towns. The province of Ciudad Real, which lies between the Sierra de Morena and the mountains of Toledo, is traversed by the Guadiana. It is the most thinly populated of all the provinces of Spain, having only thirteen inhabitants to the square kilometre; but it is by no means the least wealthy. It contains within it the quicksilver-mines of Almaden (9000), the richest deposit in the world before the late discoveries in California. They were a source of revenue to the Spanish crown for centuries, with an annual rent of over a quarter of a million. They were however mortgaged by the Government for thirty years in order to raise a loan of 2,318,000l. at five per cent., to be extinguished in 1900. The average annual extract is estimated at 12,000 tons of mercury. The vineyards round Valdepeñas (11,000) supply the red wine which is the favourite beverage of the Spaniards throughout the centre and the south, and the home consumption of which is far beyond that of the sherries. Almagro (14,000) is known for its lace manufacture; but Ciudad-Real, the capital (12,000), is fallen from its ancient importance. Damiel (13,000) and Manzanares (9000) are the only other towns that need mention.
Toledo (21,000), watered by the Tagus, was for centuries the most important city of Spain. It is here that the great councils which really regulated the civil as well as the ecclesiastical administration of Spain, from the fourth to the eighth centuries were held. Here too was one of the centres of Arabic civilization: the waterworks, clocks, and observatory of Toledo were among the wonders of the world from the tenth to the twelfth centuries, and even after its capture by the Christians, in 1085, the conqueror seemed for a while to have fallen under the same spell. The court of Alfonso X., the Wise, was a semi-Moorish court, and his tolerance excited the indignant wonder of travellers from other parts of Europe. Moorish and Christian architecture is still most strangely blended in many of its buildings, and Moorish architects were long employed to keep in repair not only the structures which their ancestors had raised, but even the Christian churches. The skill of its ironworkers and the temper of its sword-blades were renowned throughout Europe. The superiority of its steel was said to be due to some peculiar virtue of the water of the Tagus used in tempering; but the best of the iron was taken from the mines of Mondragon, in Guipuzcoa. The manufactory has greatly fallen from its ancient splendour, but some good weapons are still made, though they cannot compete in price with British or foreign goods. The insurrection of its inhabitants under the "Comuneros" in 1520, in defence of the ancient constitutional liberties of Castille probably determined the selection of the more obsequious town of Madrid as the capital of Spain by the Emperor Charles V. Toledo, with its narrow streets and semi-Moorish houses, is emphatically the city of Old Spain; the purest Spanish is said still to be spoken there, and for native poets and romancers it seems to have an attraction beyond that of any of the cities of Andalusia. The only other town of importance in the province is Talavera, with its fifteenth-century bridge of nearly a quarter of a mile in length.
Madrid.—The province of Madrid lies between the Sierra de Guadarrama on the north and the Tagus on the south. The city, which now contains almost 400,000 inhabitants, was a third or fourth-rate town until Charles V., and after him Philip II., chose it for the capital of Spain, in place of either Toledo or Valladolid. Its recommendations seem to have been its central position, and the absence of any strong traditions of ancient constitutional liberties, such as might hamper the sovereign in developing his new despotism. A city which owed its creation entirely to the sovereign, and its riches to to the presence of his court, would be certain to be obedient to its rulers. If Charles V. and Philip II. did not make it the centre of a free and constitutional government, they at least enriched it with all the treasures of art which the rulers of the greater part of Europe could collect from the various parts of their vast dominions.