Iberia (2 page)

J
AMES
A. M
ICHENER

 

Iberia
x
January 15, 1968
I
INTRODUCTION

I have long believed that any man interested in either the mystic
or the romantic aspects of life must sooner or later define his
attitude concerning Spain. For just as this forbidding peninsula
physically juts into the Atlantic and stands isolated, so
philosophically the concept of Spain intrudes into the imagination,
creating effects and raising questions unlike those evoked by other
nations. During the four decades that I have traveled in Spain I
have always wanted to describe the impact this vibrant land has
had upon me, and now I have an opportunity to do so.

Did any traveler ever enter Spain in a more appropriate manner
than I? While a student in Scotland, I had shipped as chart boy
aboard a Clydeside freighter which lugged coal to Italy and
brought back oranges from Spain to be used in the marmalade
factories of Dundee. We sailed from Glasgow, buried in coal dust,
as ugly a little tramp steamer as ever skirted the Bay of Biscay.
Against head-winds we made only ninety-six miles a day, pitching
and tossing the while, so that I was well fed up with the trip before
we ever saw land. Then out of the Atlantic we spotted Cabo
Finisterre off the port bow, and for much of one stormy day we
kept it in view, a tantalizing taste of Spain, solid, dark, mysterious,
looming out of the gray waves.

As our freighter rose and fell in the troughs this glimpse of land
began to haunt me. More than anything else in the world I wanted
to see the Spain of which Finisterre formed the western rampart.
Past this point three and a half centuries ago Sir Francis Drake
had come to harry Spanish shipping and to burn Spanish ports.
Here the Armada had formed for its assault on England, and the
headland as I saw it that stormy day was well suited to historic
purposes. It was dark, heavy, unlike anything I had previously
seen. It was in truth land’s end, the western promontory of the
European continent, and it challenged the mind.

Well, we left Finisterre and plowed our way monotonously
south, and a long time later, when I had grown accustomed to
the pitching of our uncomfortable freighter, we steamed into the
Straits of Gibraltar and I saw, again to port, the sun-drenched
uplands of Algeciras, and they were so different from what I had
seen in the storm off Finisterre, so inviting and so startling in the
vividness of their color, that I again felt the urge to flee that ship
and go ashore, forgetting Italy, which had been the purpose for
making this trip.

But we left Gibraltar behind us, then Mallorca, then Corsica,
and finally we emptied our coal at ancient Civitavecchia, that
dreariest of all Italian ports, where Michelangelo had once served
as city architect in charge of fortifying the harbor and where Henri
Beyle had spent long years as French consul, publishing his
reflections under the name of Stendhal. He and Michelangelo
distracted me for a while, but often as I traveled over Italy on
leave from the coal barge I recalled those two fleeting glimpses of
Spain and longed for the day when our empty ship would sail
into some distinguished port like Valencia or Barcelona to pick
up our oranges. I imagined myself striding ashore to inspect at
first hand the greatness which I felt sure existed in that dour land.
The captain of the freighter wasn’t certain which of the ports we
would head for, but trusted Glasgow to advise him by the time
we reached Mallorca.

When we were abeam of that island the wireless finally spoke:
‘Castellón de la Plana,’ and the captain was pleased. ‘Beautiful
little city,’ he said.

I ran to my charts and found that Castellón lay between
Barcelona and Valencia, the actual city being some two miles or
more inland from the harbor. It was a major port for the shipping
of oranges and traditionally the scene of Spain’s first fair of the
year, at which the opening bullfights of the season were held.
‘Castellón is one of the best places in Spain for beginning a visit,’
the captain assured me.

During the passage from Mallorca to the mainland I memorized
the shipping instructions contained in

Pilot for the East Coast of
Spain
and prepared myself spiritually for my entrance to the
country by rereading the best passages of
Don Quixote
. But on
the last evening we received a wireless directing us to avoid
Castellón de la Plana and to proceed instead to the tiny village of
Burriana, where oranges were awaiting us.

‘Burriana has no harbor!’ I protested, for the

Pilot
said: ‘Ships
anchor in the roads and prudent ones keep a sharp watch on their
lines.’

‘They barge the oranges out to us,’ the captain explained.
‘Then we don’t land?’

can ride ashore on one of the barges and join us next week in
Valencia.’

 

‘No.’

 

My disappointment was so apparent that he added, ‘But you

I had rarely heard finer words, and all that night I stayed on
deck, waiting to catch my first glimpse of the point at which I
would enter Spain, but no lights showed, and finally in the east,
over Mallorca, which we had left astern, the sun began to rise and
a soft Mediterranean beauty suffused the air.

My first view of Burriana? It wasn’t a view. It was a smell, for
the offshore breeze carried to our dirty little freighter the odor of
orange blossoms, heavy and pungent and inescapably the odor
of Spain. Then, in the direction from which this superb aroma
came, I saw the low shore begin to rise from the waves and with
incredible swiftness present itself. Our ship slowed. The anchor
chains went out. Lines were thrown to men in rowboats, who
attached them to buoys, and gradually we swung in to the current,
ready to receive whatever cargo awaited us.

It was than that I saw the immemorial aspect of Spain, and my
introduction in the minutes that followed was so perfect that it
still stands for me as a permanent vision of Spain. Later I was to
see the bullfights in Ronda and the cathedral at Santiago de
Compostela and the roomful of Velázquez paintings at the Prado,
and the pass at Roncesvalles where Roland perished and the great,
bleak olive orchards of Badajoz and the Holy Week processions
in Sevilla. I was to see the Spain that men have written about for
two thousand years, but seldom would I see anything so
representative of Spain.

Since the little farming village of Burriana had no harbor
curving out to protect the shore, it could have no pier; storm
waves driving in from the east would periodically destroy attempts
to maintain a quay. So the huge barges which conveyed the
oranges to the freighter had to be loaded ashore. Each barge was
hauled onto dry land and crammed with barrels containing
oranges until it must have weighed several tons.

‘Why barrels?’ I asked, watching the procedure with binoculars.
‘They are barrels, aren’t they?’

Where are you going, Petenera?

 

‘Steel barrels.’

 

‘Why?’

 

‘You’ll see.’

 

Obviously, when the barges were loaded they had to be dragged
back into the water in order to be floated so that they could be
rowed out to our ship. How to do it? In Roman times businessmen
using this coast for the transfer of freight to Italy had solved the
problem. They reared a breed of oxen that thrived in salt water,
and now these huge beasts, working in the sea with often only
their eyes and horns visible, backed close to a barge while
workmen attached chains to their harness. Then with men who
also lived mostly in the sea whipping at them and cursing, the
great beasts strained while everyone ashore pushed on the barge.
Slowly, slowly the near-swimming oxen and the men and the
shouting got the barge moving. Slowly it left the shore. The
massive oxen moved deeper and deeper into the sea, so that men
directing them had to keep afloat by grasping the oxen’s horns,
and in this way the oranges in their steel barrels were ferried out
to our ship.

 

The first Spaniard I ever met was a workman of Burriana,
dressed only in a breechcloth, swimming to meet me with his left
hand grasping the horn of an ox. He was a poor man and existed
only by this brutal work, which kept him half submerged all day,
but he had the face of a satyr rising from a swamp, and when I
first saw him he was laughing. His skin was bronzed like leather
and he had not shaved for some days. He had enormous arms
and very quick eyes and saw at once that I was a stranger, perhaps
an American, who might pay for a ride ashore in his barge. In a
guttural voice using a Valencian argot, he grunted at me. Of the
first sentences spoken to me in Spain I understood not a single
word.

 

I did understand, of course, that he was proposing to carry me
ashore in his barge, for a fee. I agreed and started to climb into
the barge, but our captain interrupted. ‘There’s no point in going
ashore now. It’s only five o’clock. No buses to Castellón yet.’ He
was right, so to the disappointment of the bargeman I said I’d
wait.

 

‘But only me,’ he insisted in words I did understand. ‘Not those
other…’ He indicated the next barge coming to our ship, and I
wished I had enough command of the Valencian dialect to
understand his profane description of his competitors. It must
have been extreme, because when he repeated it for the benefit
of the incoming crew they threatened him. But he laughed.

 

Till the sun was high I stayed on deck, watching the nautical
oxen of Burriana haul loaded barges, then talking with the rugged
men who brought the barges to our freighter, but each time my
satyr returned he renewed his contract with me. ‘When I go ashore
I’ll go with you,’ I assured him. I would have been afraid to go
with another.

 

I now discovered why the oranges were being delivered in steel
drums, for the captain directed that a hose be thrust down into
the Mediterranean where the water was clear, then ordered the
deck hands, ‘Knock out the bungs,’ and presently all the drums
were opened and I saw that the oranges inside had been cut in
half. The resulting juice, of course, did not fill the barrel, and the
empty space was now to be filled with sea water.

 

‘What’s the idea?’ I asked.

 

‘Everything sloshes back and forth, all the way home to
Dundee,’ the captain said.

 

‘To accomplish what?’

 

‘It prepares the rind for making marmalade.’

 

There were two schools of thought aboard our ship. The captain
held that the action of salt water ate away the pulpy part of the
rind and left the skin translucent, as required in the better brands
of marmalade. The pulp and juice would be thrown away.
‘Nonsense,’ one of the deck hands argued. ‘Everything in that
barrel is mixed with sugar and then boiled down to make that
bittersweet taste of true Dundee marmalade. Without the salt
water it wouldn’t be worth a damn.’

 

A tugging at my sleeve reminded me that my laughing satyr
was back, and this time I allowed him to lower me into his barge,
now empty of drums. He had arms like some prehistoric man,
and to him I was a child. His animals were unlike any I had ever
seen before, and together we moved toward the shore of Spain.
When I saw the process of launching the barges close up I was
appalled at the energy required. It was medieval or worse. It was
an expenditure that I could not comprehend and it continued all
day and all year, men and animals working themselves to death.

 

But the men thus engaged were so handsome, their smiles so
compelling that there was something different about them,
something powerful and stoic. This was their lot and they would
not complain. Ashore some were having breakfast and they invited
me to join. I knew that I was taking someone’s share, but I could
not resist such an opening meal in my new country and I paid
my bargeman for my share of food. I can taste it yet: anchovies,
which have always been my delight, hard bread, harder cheese
and red wine. How good it was, how honest in its Spanish quality.

 

I wondered if any previous traveler to Spain had entered
through this nonexistent Burriana? Later I was to enter through
many different ports, but none has ever compared with the beauty
of that first morning, nor with its significance. Because in
subsequent years, no matter how superficial my visits might be
or my reactions to them, I could rely on the fact that at the
beginning, if only for a moment, I had been allowed to see deep
into the quality of Spain. I saw the toiling men, the congenial
peasants, the straining beasts, the honest food. I smelled the salt
of the shore, the oranges of the inland fields, the burning chicory
that passed for coffee, the sourness of the red wine, the harsh
seductiveness of cheap anchovies. It is this Spain that has been
with me through the years, and whenever in subsequent visits I
have again come close to that particular vision I have felt at home.