Spanish people

“ We have examined every type of Spanish ballad poetry. The general note struck, we will observe, is a grave and romantic one, the fruit of the thoughts of a proud and imaginative people. Nor can we fail to notice the national note which rings through these poems, the racial individuality which informs them. “Poor Spain!” How often do we hear the expression employed by men of Anglo-Saxon race! Let these undeceive themselves. What can material poverty signify to a people dowered with such treasures of the imagination? Poor Spain! ”

“ The people of New Spain were poor and uneducated,—the aristocracy was rich, supercilious, and almost equally illiterate. It was a society without a middle ground,—in which gold stood out in broad relief against rags. ”

“ And so curiously is Spanish society constituted, that though considered the proudest people in the world, yet, on occasions like this, Spaniards lay aside the distinction of rank, and mix together in the most unceremonious manner. Indeed, no people I have ever seen treat their inferiors with greater respect than the Spanish Nobles. ”

“ The people of both countries exhibit a similar excitable, ardent quality in their characters; but the national temperament of the Spaniards is, perhaps, somewhat hardier, more virile, and sturdier in its passionateness. ”

“ But we had a little knowledge of the language, and we had determined to conform literally to Spanish customs and to observe the forms of Spanish etiquette, and so we hoped to fare better than the bulk of English travellers who, in print and out of it, have made such a parade of the drawbacks to a sojourn in Spain.
These Spanish customs are most interesting. They must be observed by anyone who wants to get on with the people. The usual British idea of looking upon natives as ‘a lot of foreigners’ won’t do here. ”

“ Yet Spain is far from unhappy. It is beautiful to see out of what scant allowance of that which we call well-being, may be evolved wisdom and joy, poetry and religion. Wearied as 443 we two bookish travellers were with lectures and libraries, we rejoiced in this wild Galician lore that lives on the lips of the people. The written Spanish literature, like other Spanish arts, is of the richest, nor are its laurels limited to the dates of Cervantes and Calderon. ”

“ These dignified and solemn Spanish salutations are universal among the people, and are never omitted.{67} Your beggar in Spain is a gentleman, and you address him always in formal and courteous language. ‘Brother,’ you say, when he importunes you, ‘may God put it into your heart to deprive me of the pleasure of your society!’ To your waiter, to the servant, to the boy who blacks your boots, your language must never be curt. At the table d’hôte in Spain, high-born gentlemen and the officers talk as much with the waiter as they do with each other. ”

“ The genius of the Spanish people is exquisitely subtle, without being at all acute; hence there is so much humour and so little wit in their literature. ”

“ Its people have undergone as great, if not greater, vicissitudes than any other people upon the earth, and to-day there does not exist a race more courtly, more sincere, and with more confidence in their country and themselves than the Spanish. ”

“ The upper classes betray a marked Spanish origin, both in their appearance and speech, and are a little better educated; but most of the people of real Spanish descent were killed during the war, and few, if any, remain to-day who can boast a purely European origin, excepting always the small number of foreigners, English, Italians, Germans, Portuguese, and Spaniards, who have found their way into the country during the last century, and settled there, and those who continue to flow in year after year from many climes, making their new homes in this beautiful country. ”

“ For Spain needs peace, long periods of tranquillity in which to develop her resources and to learn the more difficult task of maintaining in prosperity that strength and independent nobility of character which have shone out so clearly in misfortune. The conclusion then, if so desultory a study warrants a conclusion, is that the Spanish are a fundamentally noble, courteous, and independent people, energetic and brave, with a natural tendency to grandeur and generosity, whom poverty often leads to hollow display and the consequent suspicion and distrust. ”

“ To jump from the physical to the moral, the Spaniards are the most provincial people conceivable, as much so as we were forty years ago. It is comfortable, for they think they have the best of everything—even of governments, for aught I know. But the everything must be Spanish. ”

“ National as it was, and because of this very quality, the Spanish drama was fated to share the lot of the people it so fully represented. At the end of the 17th century, when the Spanish throne at last became the declared apple of discord among the governments of Europe, the Spanish Decay of the national
Spanish drama.people lay, in the words of an historian of its later days, “like a corpse, incapable of feeling its own impotence.” That national art to which it had so faithfully clung had fallen into decline and decay with the spirit of Spain itself. ”

“ The most marked result of these natural conditions has been the isolation, not only of Spain from the rest of the world, but also of the different regions of Spain from one another. Spaniards have therefore developed the conservative clinging to their own institutions and the individuality of an island people. While this has retarded their development into a nation, it has held secure the advances made and has vitalized Spanish civilization. ”

“ The country once belonged to Spain, and all the chief people in it are born of Spanish fathers and mothers. The people all talk Spanish, though the poorer classes have come from the native Indians, and many have had Spanish fathers. ”

“ Spanish children are too often ill-cared for, but despite the abuses of ignorant motherhood and fatherhood, such vivid, vivacious, bewitching little people as they are! ”

“ Had the King of Spain employed the hands of his people, and his Spanish iron so, he had brought to light but little of that treasure that lay so long hid in the dark entrails of America. ”

“ Detestation of the public policy of Spain, and a hearty abhorrence of its state creed, we consider by no means incompatible with a warm admiration for the natural beauties of the country, and even a zest for Spanish life and manners. ”

“ There is a degree of wretchedness and want among the lower class of people which is not anywhere so common as among the Spanish and Portuguese settlements. ”

“ They are eminently readable; and if they pretend to no great depth of reflection, they sketch the present condition of Spain—they delineate its landscapes, they cull the choicest episodes of its history, and touch upon the more conspicuous features of the Spanish character—with unfailing good sense, quick discrimination, and considerable felicity. ”

“ He is authorised by custom to enter all houses, at all hours, where he is received and treated almost as a god. These are facts which can be vouched by all Spaniards, by whom they are spoken of without the least reserve. In laying them before the English public, we disavow all idea of calumniating an entire class of Spanish society. Our object is to point out one of the causes which, in our opinion, enters into the number of those which, most effectively, have contributed to the decline of so sensible and generous a nation. ”

“ The clear atmosphere of Spain, in which distant mountains seem to be close at hand, is also the atmosphere of Spanish literature. The Spaniard may have little subtlety of insight or critical judgment, but he has a directness of vision that has manifested itself in bigotry, brutality, and cynical satire, as well as in keen humour, straight-forwardness, and dignity of character. ”

“ A scientist of repute, his voice choking with grief and wrath, declared to us that the fetters of superstition had become hopelessly riveted, during these ages of Church control, on the Spanish mind. But call it what you will, devotion or superstition, and admitting, as the tourist must, that it is a most conspicuous and impressive feature of Spanish life, there are nevertheless thousands of Spaniards, especially the younger men, over whom it has lost sway. ”

“ Spanish prose sheds much of its uncouthness, and takes its definitive form in such a passage as that upon the Joys of Spain: "More than all, Spain is subtle,—ay! and terrible, right skilled in conflict, mirthful in labour, stanch to her lord, in letters studious, in speech courtly, fulfilled of gifts; never a land the earth overlong to match her excellence, to rival her bravery; few in the world as mighty as she." ”

“ I go, then, to the head of the Mexican army—an army the off-spring of a free people—and joined with it, I will fulfil my utmost duty in opposing the enemies of my country. I will die fighting, or lead the valiant Mexicans to the enjoyment of a triumph to which they are alike entitled by justice, by their warlike character, and by the dignity and enthusiasm which they have preserved, of a free nation. The war is a necessity of immediate importance; every day's delay is an age of infamy ”

“ The value of a better understanding between the peoples of the two Americas, both for the reasons just named and for many others, scarcely calls for argument. It is almost equally clear that one of the essentials to such an understanding is a comprehension of Spanish civilization, on which that of the Spanish American peoples so largely depends. ”

“ If there were any thing in the Spanish character to work upon, for good or evil, the influence of such a decided national pastime 113would be more distinctly pronounced. But the senseless pride of the Spaniard,—pride with nothing to be proud of; pride with idleness, ignorance, and poverty; pride of the meanest and most contemptible sort,—is the warp and woof of Spanish character, and there is hardly any thing more in them than there would be in a nation of peacocks. ”

“ The groundless sense of personal superiority in every thing belonging to Spain, its religion, its government, its literature, and its people, has, during the last four hundred years of European advance, kept Spain stationary. ”

“ You must needs grow excited, speak at party meetings, take the elections seriously, mingle with the crowd at the political demonstrations, break with your friends, form a clique of those who think as you think—make, in a word, a Spaniard of yourself, even to the whites of your eyes. And gradu268ally, as you become Spanish, you forget Europe, as if it were at the antipodes, and end in seeing nothing beyond Spain, as if you were governing it, and as if all its interests were in your hands. ”

“ If this is so, certainly the Moors, and France, and Italy have wrought some of their most original works in Spain; and it can hardly be said that the great Spanish discoverers and conquerors, painters, philosophers, and poets of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries were not original, whether they were influenced by Moors, Frenchmen, or Italians. [45] But, indeed, the Spaniard more readily repels than assimilates, it is his virtue and his defect; he remains isolated and alone, difficult to convince, impossible to govern. ”

“ His selection of native themes, his vigorous appeal to those primitive sentiments which are at least as strong in Spain as elsewhere—courage, patriotism, religion—have ensured him a vogue so wide and lasting that it almost approaches immortality. ”

“ All the Spaniards here long and yearn for Spain, and everything Spanish, which is only natural, I suppose. They hate the Archipelago, as they call it, but confess that the prospect of continuing to earn a living here ties them by the leg. ”

“ Spanish literature, like our own, takes its root in French and in Italian soil; in the anonymous epics, in the fableaux, as in Dante, Petrarch, and the Cinque Cento poets. Excessive patriotism leads men of all lands to magnify their literary history; yet it may be claimed for Spain, as for England, that she has used her models without compromising her originality, absorbing here, annexing there, and finally dominating her first masters. ”

“ A beautiful trait of character and a lovely custom of the Spanish peasantry appear in their love for parents. They yield to them obedience, respect, veneration, and love, after they are aged, and the children are men and women grown. ”

“ It is true, however, that the mass of the Spanish nation has still to develop on really Spanish lines: hence its present weakness and its potential strength in the future, when a civilization of a truly national character shall have imposed itself upon the artificial civilization of culture imported from France, and religion imported from Rome. ”

“ At the present time, in which there seems to have been born into the world a new assertion and exaltation of nationality, Spaniards have regained their ancient spirit, and while aspiring to absolute modernity, remain faithful to a tradition which is peculiarly their own, which makes for national individuality, and has caused them to be regarded with that interest which always accrues to the original, the characteristic, the intelligent, and consequently arouses attention and anticipation. ”

“ There are many things we could learn from the Spanish. Their solid, dignified cities of massive stone houses with deep, heavy arcades into which the sun never penetrates; their broad plazas where cool fountains spout under great shade-trees; their imposing over-ornate churches, their general look of solid permanence, put to shame our flimsy, ephemeral, planless British West Indian towns of match-boarding and white paint. We seldom look ahead: they always did. ”