Iberia by James A. Michener
Sevilla is ancient and as a city of importance nearly two thousand years older than Madrid. It was an important Roman center, and near its present site stand the excavated ruins of a considerable city named Itálica. But Roman occupation of the area left little imprint on Sevilla, although Sevilla made considerable impression on Rome, having contributed two of the principal Caesars, Hadrian and Trajan. Sevilla was also a major capital of the Moors, having been occupied by them in one capacity or another for 536 years, yet today one finds in the city even fewer of the Muslim memories that make Córdoba and Granada such noble testaments to the Moorish origin submerged in Christian additions, while in the nave of the massive cathedral the Moorish pillars are lost in heavy Gothic shadows. Whenever a conqueror departed, Sevilla quickly reestablished itself as a Spanish city, jealous of its prerogatives and marvelously insular in its attitudes. If one seeks a whole body of people who have refused to acknowledge the advent of change, few can compare with the citizens of Sevilla.
Of all the cities involved in the Spanish Civil War, Sevilla was modified least by the experience; the governors required only a few hours to make up their minds as to which side they were on, and after an initial slaughter of six thousand, took over the place for General Franco and his troops. Avoiding the agonizing indecision that paralyzed and even doomed other cities, the people of Sevilla almost avoided the war. Little of moment happened here and the return to peace was accomplished more quickly than in any other city of comparable size. To Americans, whether from north or south, Sevilla is of special interest because although the colonies of Spain were conquered by Extremadura, they were governed from Sevilla; the cargoes of gold from Peru and Mexico were brought up the Gualdalquivir to the docks where the bullring now stands, and the nobles who were to rule the distant lands either well or poorly sailed with their commissions from this port. Scholars have long believed that one day the inexhaustible depositories of Sevilla will produce hitherto unknown documents relating to the early history of the Americas, and they expect maps to be uncovered which will alter our present understandings, for to Sevilla came reports from all parts of the world. Here also centered the branches of the Church dealing with America and the administrative cadres, both civil and military, responsible for the actual governing. Sevilla might properly be termed the historic capital of the Americas; during some three centuries it was the nerve center which controlled all.
If a stranger could inspect but one city in Spain and if he wished to acquire therefrom a reasonable comprehension of what the nation as a whole was like, I think he would be well advised to spend his time in Sevilla, for this city, even though it is too individualistic to be called a microcosm of the whole, is nevertheless a good introduction to classical Spanish life. I was familiar with the rest of Spain before I saw Sevilla, but nothing I had learned elsewhere taught me so much about Spanish behavior. Others have reported a similar experience, for Sevilla does not have ambiente; it is ambiente, and nowhere has this been better expressed than in a lyric by Manuel Machado, written in this century, which is quoted constantly throughout Spain. It is a litany of Andalusian names, each described with its most typical appositives except one, for which no adjectives or nouns suffice:
Cádiz, salada claridad,
Granada, agua oculta que llora.
Romana y mora, Córdoba callada,
Málaga, cantaora,
Almería, dorada.
Plateado Jaén.
Huelva, la orilla de las tres caravelas.
Y Sevilla.
(Cádiz, salt-laden brilliance/ Granada, hidden waters that weep/ Roman and Moorish, silent Córdoba/ Málaga, flamenco singer/ Almería the golden/ Silvery Jaén/ Huelva, the shore of the three caravels [of Columbus]/ And Sevilla.)
No part of the spring feria was more enchanting to me than the way it ended. As dawn breaks following the last night of the fair, or perhaps at six or even at seven o’clock, when there is no longer any hope of encountering late revelers, and when the sound of clapping has finally died out in the streets, drivers of horse-drawn cabs assemble informally at the southern edge of the city. There, from whatever bottles of wine they have reserved for this moment, they drink together and stare back at the outlines of Sevilla as it becomes visible in the morning twilight. Then they climb onto their seats, whip their horses gently and begin a single-file trek to the south.
Here comes a carriage with arms blazoned across the door. Behind it moves a pair of white horses pulling a cab which today bears no paying passengers but only the driver, his wife and their three children, all five sleeping as the horses jog slowly homeward. Here come two more cabs with their drivers asleep, for many of the cabbies have not been to bed for more than a week; during the fair cabs are busy twenty-four hours a day. In quick succession three businesslike cabs pull out of line and overtake the others, for their drivers hope to gain additional fares by reaching home before nightfall. And at intervals one sees highly polished carriages being driven by boys not much older than ten or eleven; the rightful drivers have gone south by bus so as to get in a full day’s work at some regular job, leaving the cabs to be brought home by their sons.
For fifty miles this extraordinary parade stretches out, a hundred carriages or more, so that if you travel this day along the eastern edge of Las Marismas you will see fine vehicles all the way to Jerez de la Frontera and even on toward Cádiz. For these are shrewd men whose ancestors learned more than a hundred years ago that if a driver can somehow get his carriage to Sevilla during the fair he can pick up a good deal of money from the excess of strangers who crowd the city at that time. It is worth making a drive of sixty miles or more each way to qualify for a chance at this money, and now the cabs are heading home.
If any reader should want to see the feria for himself, he’d better hurry. On my last day in Sevilla I asked Señor Ybarra, whose ancestor had revived the fair in 1847, if there was any truth in the rumor that the fair grounds had been sold for industrial buildings, which would mean the end of the circuses, the carnival and the casetas, and he said, ‘We’ve been told that the land has been sold. It’s economically impossible to keep so much land near the center of the city lying idle eleven and a half months a year so that people can ride horseback for one week. But don’t worry. Plans are under way to move the whole thing out to the river lands where the horse fair is now held.’
I cannot imagine Sevilla in the spring with a fair so far away that I could not easily walk to it. I cannot imagine the nights without groups of people passing beneath my window on their way home. I am sure the new fair will be approved by many, but not by me.
VII
MADRID
From the first moment when as a boy I read of Spain, and in high school when I studied my first Spanish short stories, and even in college when reading simplified novels, one corner of Spain always preempted my affection, as during recent centuries it preempted the affection of Spaniards. Poets wrote verses about this part of Madrid; novelists laid some of their most powerful scenes within sight of its buildings; painters depicted it at various times of day; and on frequent occasions the ordinary people of Spain erupted into its confines to launch either protest or revolution. Scenes of the most dreadful savagery had occurred here, but scenes of compassion and love were not uncommon.
It was appropriate that the first literary work I read in Spanish was El capitán Veneno (Captain Poison, 1881) by Pedro Antonio de Alarcón (1833–1891), in which a gruff and surly captain is wounded in one of the frequent uprisings of the time and thereafter takes refuge in the house of an impoverished woman and daughter who live in the vicinity of the Puerta del Sol.
Gate of the Sun! Eastern Gate of Madrid, from which road distances in Spain are measured. Beloved of Madrileños for centuries and focus of their life in a way that the popular squares of other European capitals could not equal. I was a young man filled with unrealistic visions of Spain when I first saw it, and from an inconsequential hotel which stood nearby I began those quiet exploratio
What was the Puerta del Sol? In my day there was no portal or gate as such, although in earlier centuries there must have been. There was, however, an intimate plaza shaped somewhat like a half-circle, around whose curved side stood a collection of sturdy, symmetrical beige buildings of almost classical charm. Along the flat side stood government buildings of some sort, but these never attracted my attention. A total of ten streets debouched into the plaza, which explained how, in time of riot, it could so swiftly fill with people. The Puerta itself contained no shops that interested me, but in the warren of streets and twisting alleys which fanned out from it were some of the most enticing businesses in Spain. Here one could find almost anything he desired and, as we shall see later, almost any kind of restaurant.
How utterly lovely the Puerta del Sol was in those days, how exciting for a foreign tourist! This word has come into ill repute in recent years, because so many tourists have gone abroad with no preparation which would enable them to appreciate what they were about to see and no humility to make them approach the country on its own terms. In Spain I have always been a tourist and have been rather proud of that fact. This is the book of a tourist and the experiences described herein, are those which are open to any intelligent traveler. If, as I once heard an Englishman say, ‘to be a tourist is to stand gape-eyed with love,’ I have been one, and never more so than in my first days in the Puerta del Sol.
Because I wanted to stay as close to the heart of Madrid as possible, I took a room in the old Hotel París on the Calle de Alcalá, a room as dark and confined as any I have ever stayed in. There was no reason why a sensible young man would remain in such a room a minute longer than necessary, for my lone window looked into a ventilation chute and the bathroom was so far down the hall that I could not luxuriate in the tub. It was rather like the bunk on a submarine, a place which one uses only when in a state of utter exhaustion. Thus I was thrown into the Puerta del Sol for as long as I could walk and then into the public rooms of the Hotel Paris when I had to rest.
In the plaza I met wonderful people who enjoyed talking with a norteamericano. In the hotel I met considerate men and women who wanted to be sure that I saw the best in Madrid. ‘Have you been to the military museum?’ they would ask, or, ‘Have you tried the seafood restaurant in the Calle de los Cuchilleros [Cutlers]?’ And they talked with me, abiding my poor Spanish but recognizing my enthusiasm. It was with strangers from’ this hotel lounging room that I first saw the Prado Museum and stood ‘gape-eyed’ at the plethora of greatness it contained. It was with a family that was bored with its room as small as mine that I went to the Teatro de la Zarzuela to resume my study of what I had liked so much at the theater in Castellón de la Plana. With these congenial strangers I saw the parks, the boulevards, the bars of the grand hotels and the music halls, but always we came back to the Puerta del Sol, that magic plaza along whose edge the trolley cars ran to all parts of the city. In my travels I have sometimes been disappointed in sights which publicity has built up; at other times I have been surprised by the excellence of things I had not previously heard about; but I believe the most pleasant experience is to find something like the Puerta del Sol which is exactly the way the poets, historians, novelists and musical composers have said it was. Now, of course, it is much diminished; the burgeoning growth of Madrid had dragged the center of the city to other quarters and the tourist will no longer find in the Puerta what I found there. I went down the other day and it looked much like an open square in New York or Mexico City and it was difficult to believe that this was the spot which had had so strong an effect upon me years ago. The Hotel Paris still stands and in its rooms travelers with small funds still stare at ventilation shafts, but the glory of the Puerta del Sol is dimmed.
The same can be said, I think, of that really noble area that stands just off the Puerta del Sol, the Plaza Mayor, a huge thing rimmed with classical buildings and massive stone arcades. A rather fine equestrian statue in the middle of the plaza carries a plaque which summarizes the history of the place:
QUEEN ISABEL II, AT THE REQUEST
OF THE GOVERNMENT OF MADRID, ORDERED TO BE PLACED
ON THIS SITE THIS STATUE OF
KING FELIPE III
SON OF THIS TOWN, WHO RETURNED THE COURT
TO IT IN 1606 AND IN 1619 CONSTRUCTED THIS
PLAZA MAYOR
1848
An eighteenth-century engraving shows the great plaza prepared for a bullfight in which four mounted noblemen were to participate, and the caption, written at the time, states that ‘the Plaza Mayor on this day showed seven hundred balconies and contained fifty-two thousand spectators.’
The plaza is linked, in the minds of those who read Spanish history, with Spain’s most unfortunate king, Carlos II (1661–1700), known as El Hechizado (The Bewitched) because of his twisted and incompetent body and mind to match. He was the last of the Spanish Habsburgs and the inheritor of all their weaknesses; a substantial case could be made that he was insane, but he reigned from the age of three, and it was his childless death that brought the Borbón rulers to the Spanish throne and the war of the Spanish succession to Europe.
When Carlos was eighteen he caused much excitement at court by finally expressing an interest in something. Overhearing that the Inquisition’s jails in outlying districts were crowded with heretics whom the judges had found guilty but had not yet burned, he announced that it was his pleasure to hold in the Plaza Mayor a sumptuous auto-da-fé at which a hundred and twenty condemned would be brought forth for sentencing. With real excitement the slack-jawed monarch organized a spectacle of which the English historian John Langdon-Davies has said, ‘There can be no denying that the show staged on June 30th, 1680, in the Plaza Mayor of Madrid, must have been one of the most dramatic, the most moving, conceived by the mind of man since the days when Christians and wild beasts fought one another for the amusement of decadent Rome.’ Carlos spent a month formulating the complex ritual for the exhibition and running through a series of dress rehearsals. On the day itself fourteen uninterrupted hours were spent preaching at the heretics and reading their sentences, after which one hundred and one were dismissed with lesser sentences, like flogging or a term in the galleys, while the remaining nineteen were prepared for the stake.
La zarzuela.
It is not my intention to recite the details of this grisly day; anyone wishing to know what was entailed in an auto-da-fé—for some curious reason this particularly Spanish institution has always been known in English in its Portuguese spelling, instead of the Spanish auto de fé (act of faith)—should consult Langdon-Davies’ Carlos, The King Who Would Not Die (1962). I am more interested in that author’s researches as to how the king who had organized this spectacle for his personal edification had become the way he was, and what Langdon-Davies has to say on this subject throws much light both on Spanish history and on the decline of the Habsburgs.
Spain had had two crazy queens. The second we have already met, lying in state in the mausoleum in Granada, Juana la Loca (1479–1555). The first was her grandmother, Isabel of Portugal (c. 1430–1496), whom we shall meet more fully in the next chapter. It was through these two unfortunate women that the madness of the Spanish Habsburgs was transmitted; had their offspring married outside the family it is highly probable that the faulty strain would have been submerged. Instead, look at what happened to produce a near-idiot like Carlos II:
A man’s ancestors in the third, fourth and fifth generations comprise eight, sixteen and
These one hundred and twelve relationships in their case were shared between only thirty-eight individuals. Of Carlos’ mother’s fifty-six ancestors, forty-eight were also ancestors of his father. Of the thirty-two women in the fifth generation, that is the sixteen of one parent and sixteen of the other, twelve were descendants of mad Isabel of Portugal.
In the two family trees the name of Juana la Loca occurs eight times, the names of her two sons nineteen times. Seven out of the eight great-grandparents of Carlos II descended from Juana la Loca. No wonder he was bewitched.
Today the Plaza Mayor is a vast empty area in which little happens. The many balconies still lend the place an architectural charm, but even when I first knew it the predominant echoes were tragic, for history has passed it by and it is only in the lesser streets surrounding it that the life of Madrid moves with its old vigor. I first became aware of this one Sunday morning when I saw large numbers of people leaving the Puerta del Sol and heading for what I supposed was the Plaza Mayor, but I was wrong, for they passed right by this empty square and sought another set of streets leading to a narrow plaza watched over by a heroic statue of Eloy Gonzalo, a bearded soldier who had conducted himself with glory in the Spanish-American war in Cuba. What stretched out at the foot of the statue was something that was difficult to believe. Thousands upon thousands of people had convened, as they did each Sunday, to see what bargains they could pick up in the junk stalls of the Rastro (Slaughterhouse), and I was later to discover that no traveler can feel like a real Madrileño unless he can announce at dinner or when entertaining friends, ‘You must see the wonderful purchase I made in the Rastro last Sunday.’ Some of my friends have furnished their whole apartments from handsome odds and ends acquired in this way; one man bought in June six bronze candlesticks, each seven feet high, for three hundred dollars and sold them in August to a New York antique dealer for three thousand. Renaissance pictures, empty Coca-Cola bottles, antique needlepoint, Chevrolet carburetors, Roman coins, damaged Goya etchings and positively anything a human being could want or which in normal circumstances he would throw away can be found in this amazing market. It operates in diminished size the rest of the week, of course, but the Sunday outpouring is something to see.