Iberia (53 page)
Authors: James Michener
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,
(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.
VIIMADRID
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
(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
explorations and investigations which brought my preconceptions
of Spain into some kind of harmony with the facts. I could have
wished little better for myself than the experience of seeing the
Puerta del Sol as I did in the days before its significance began to
decline as sharply as it has done in the past thirty years. Then it
was a summary of the Spanish history of the nineteenth century,
preserved like a museum into the twentieth, and to wander in its
surroundings was to walk intimately in the alleys, if not the grand
halls, of Spanish memory.
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 París 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 París 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:
TO BE PLACED ON THIS SITE THIS STATUE OF
KING FELIPE III
1606
TO IT IN
AND IN
1619
CONSTRUCTED THIS
PLAZA MAYOR
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.’