Page:A Handbook for Travellers in Spain - Vol 1.djvu/18

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Spain appears, on the map, to be a square and most compact kingdom, politicians and geographers have treated it and its inhabitants as one and the same; practically, however, this treatment of the Peninsula is impossible, since both the political and social instincts of each once independent province vary the one from the other, no less than do the climate and productions themselves. No spick and span constitution, be it printed on parchment or calico, can at once efface traditions and antipathies of a thousand years; the accidents of localities and provincial nationalities, out of which they have sprung, remain too deeply dyed to be forthwith discharged by theorists. Spaniards may talk and boast of their country, of their Patria: every single individual in his heart really only loves his native province, and only considers as his fellow-countryman, su paisano—a most binding and endearing word—one born in the same locality as himself: hence it is not easy to predicate much in regard to “the Spains” and Spaniards in general, which will hold quite good as to each particular portion ruled by the sovereign of Las Españas, the plural title given to the chief of the federal union of this kingdom. Españolismo may be said to consist in a love for a common faith and king, and in a coincidence of resistance to all foreign dictation. The deep sentiments of religion, loyalty, and independence, noble characteristics indeed, have been sapped in our times by the influence of transpyrenean revolutions, and by Bourbon misgovernment.

In order to assist strangers in understanding the Peninsula and its people, some preliminary remarks are prefixed to each section or province, in which the leading characteristics of nature and man are pointed out. Two general observations may be premised. First. The People of Spain, the so-called Lower Orders, are in some respects superior to those who arrogate to themselves the title of being their Betters, and in most respects are more interesting. The masses, the least spoilt and the most national, stand like pillars amid ruins, and on them the edifice of Spain’s greatness must be reconstructed. This may have arisen, in this land of anomalies, from the peculiar policy of government in Church and State, where the possessors of religious and civil monopolies who dreaded knowledge as power, pressed heavily on the noble and rich, dwarfing down their bodies by intermarriages, and all but extinguishing their minds by Inquisitions; while the People, overlooked in the obscurity of poverty, were allowed to grow out to their full growth like wild weeds of a rich soil. They, in fact, have long enjoyed under despotisms of Church and State, a practical and personal independence, the good results of which are evident in their stalwart frames and manly bearing.

Secondly. A distinction must ever be made between the Spaniard in his imdividual and in his collective capacity, and still more in an official one: taken by himself, he is true and valiant: the nicety of his Pundonor, or point of personal honour, is proverbial; to him as an individual, you may safely trust your life, fair fame, and purse. Yet history, treating of these individuals in the collective juntados, presents the foulest examples of misbehaviour in the field, of Punic bad