Iberia (7 page)

 

Yet even as I said this I saw two minor things that would have
betrayed a Spanish origin. At the far end of the plaza stood a statue
to the painter Luis Morales (1509-1586) and in the next small
square another statue to another painter. Francisco Zurbarán
(1598-1664). Spain is inordinately proud of its painters and
writers. The Spanish jet which had brought me from New York
bore the name
El Greco
and I tried to imagine an American plane,
patronized by our businessmen, bearing the name
Jackson Pollock
.
And on one of the plaza walls stood the type of marble plaque
common in Spain. This one recalled the salient event of recent
Spanish history, the Civil War:
SPAIN
.

 

CONQUEROR OF COMMUNISM

 

IN THE CRUSADE WHICH BEGAN THIS DAY
TO ENSURE PEACE FOR THE EMPIRE

 

FOR UNITY, FOR GREATNESS, FOR LIBERTY
IN THE SIGN OF FRANCO, THE CAUDILLO
,
!
ARRIBA ESPAñA
!

 

17-18-19
JULY
1936

When I left the plaza I entered the old part of Badajoz, and was
delighted with the narrow streets and the memories of Spain as
it used to be. This was a pleasing part of town and here I was not
in Rome or Texas. This was authentic Spain, but when I moved
to the west and to the area of big new buildings, sprawling schools
and hospitals, I might once more have been in any modern
European city. Taken building by building, Badajoz was a
respectable-looking city, clean, well organized and modern.
Homes, stores, theaters, the lesser churches and the public offices
were about what one would expect in a city of similar size in Italy
or France. Beauty there was not, but solidity there was. There was
also evidence that the citizens had money, for whenever in my
tour I reached a high point of ground, I saw numerous television
aerials; sets in the city could bring in both Portuguese and Spanish
programs.

What kind of people lived in Badajoz? I returned to the main
plaza and found an outdoor table, where I sat for some hours
simply looking at the passers-by, and as the cooler temperatures
of evening arrived a good many people appeared for their nightly
stroll. As to the girls, they looked exactly like girls of similar age
in New York or London. They wore the same amount of make-up,
the same length of dress, the same hairdos. They giggled in the
same way at private jokes, and when they walked with young men
they held hands and sometimes kissed in public. If the young
women gave no signs of being Spanish, certain of the older women
did, but only because they wore much more black than I would
have found in England or America.

Young men looked exactly like their cousins around the western
world. In dress they were wholly indistinguishable from boys their
age in Chicago or Mexico City, except that not many wore their
hair long. They did, however, carry transistor radios, which they
used as abusively as young people elsewhere. Spaniards are
conservative in dress and this became especially noticeable when
I studied the older men, for of all groups they alone did betray
the fact that they were Spanish, but only because they wore
extremely somber clothes. I saw not a single sport shirt, nor a
blazer, nor even a light-colored suit of any kind.

In facial appearance I could not detect among the young any
characteristics that would brand them as Spanish, but as both the
girls and boys grew older a certain Spanish look did seem to
appear; I mentioned this to an Englishman whom I met later, and
he said, ‘You’re wrong. If you put a hundred of the older people
in various European cities, you’d not be able to identify them.
France, Italy, Greece, Turkey would absorb them without your
knowing. Sweden and Finland? No. The Spaniards are a little
darker than the European average and against the blonds of those
two countries they’d be conspicuous.’

One point I must make clear. You could sit in the plaza at
Badajoz for three months and see no women trailing by in
mantillas. You’d see no castanets, no high ivory combs, no colorful
shawls tied about the waist. Nor would you see any men dressed
like Don Quixote or conquistadors. No bands of guitarists gather
at midnight, wrapped in cloaks, to serenade women behind iron
grilles, and the Spanish types one sees in

Carmen
are visible only
in the bullring, where in the infrequent fights matadors dress as
they did a century ago.

Yet certain trivial customs create a Spanish atmosphere. There
being little public assistance as we know it in America, it is
traditional for blind people to roam the streets selling lottery
tickets; cripples park cars or peddle things, and consequently one
sees more deformity in Spain than he would elsewhere. There is,
however, no begging. Shoeshine boys are also more numerous,
but usually they are grown men who move endlessly from one
café table to the next, calling ‘?Limpia?’ (Shall I clean?), so that
in the course of two hours one could have his shoes shined by ten
or fifteen different men.

One of the sure signs that this is Spain is the number of young
married women who have allowed themselves to get fat. On my
first night in Badajoz, I estimated that Spanish women of thirty
years and older weighed about twenty pounds more than
American or French women of comparable age and social
background. I commented on this to a Spaniard, and he said
approvingly, ‘It’s one of the most beautiful sights in Spain. To sit
in the plaza at dusk and watch the fat married women roll by with
their husbands and children. It’s beautiful because in Spain, once
a woman is married, she never again has to fight the dinner table.
She has her man and nothing on earth can take him away from
her, so she doesn’t give a damn how fat she gets. In Spain there’s
no divorce and her children cannot be taken away nor her home
either. She’s safe. Of course, her husband will probably take a
mistress. Three-fourths of the fine Spanish gentlemen you’ve been
meeting and enjoying so much have mistresses. But they’d have
them whether their wives were slim or fat. So our women eat and
love their children and go to the movies and gossip and put their
faith in the Church, and to hell with dieting, and you won’t find
a more contented group of women in the world.’

The newspapers for sale in the plaza were a strange lot.
Generalísimo Franco, the country’s dictator, was an old man and
his successor had not been determined, and this was a matter
which might decide the fate of Spain, but public discussion of
this vital problem was forbidden, and to read the papers in
Badajoz one would have felt that the general was going to live
forever. I am speaking here of 1961, shortly after the inauguration
of President Kennedy, when American newspapers were already
speculating on what might happen in the 1964 election, and
especially the 1968, but of Spain’s greater problem there was no
discussion. In place of political news the papers offered reams of
fine writing on sports, many columns on the Church, emphasizing
the activities of the Pope, and because the men who owned the
newspapers were monarchists, a constant stream of stories about
how European countries that lived under kings were better off
than those that didn’t.

The marriage of Prince Carlos of Bourbon to Princess Ana,
daughter of the Count of Paris, was characterized by its simplicity.
Will Princess Benedicta of Denmark never find a husband? There
is still hope, but available men are few and for the present she
loves only horses.

 

Queen Isabel of England, on her forthcoming visit to Germany,
will decide what shall be served at state banquets. Even though
Prince Felipe of Edinburgh loves lobsters, none will be served
because Isabel prefers little German sausages.

One got the feeling that the Spaniards would have enjoyed arguing
politics in their papers, but it was forbidden, so they satisfied
themselves with sports and religion and the doings of distant
royalty.

And so it went. Badajoz was Spain, and no place else. It was
sharply different from Portugal, which lay only four miles away,
but it was not an exaggerated Spain, not a musical-comedy land
at all.

In the morning I set out to visit random stores to see for myself
what it would cost a Spaniard to live in Badajoz as compared with
what I paid at home. I started by listing the dinner I’d had at the
Colón:

Item
Badajoz
U.S.A.

First-class dinner
$ 1.20
$ 4.50

‘Ave, Ave, Ave Maria,

 

Hotel room
.83
14.00

 

Man’s shoes
8.00
10.00

 

Child’s schoolbag
.50
1.50

 

Woman’s slip
1.60
4.00

 

Two-piece woman’s suit
30.00
75.00

 

Kelvinator refrigerator
235.00
160.00

 

Woman’s blouse
6.50
8.00

 

Man’s suit
37.00
75.00

 

Wash-and-dry shirt
8.00
6.00

 

Slide rule
11.50
22.50

 

Fine girl’s sweater
5.00
12.00

 

Man’s haircut
.25
2.50

 

Calico dress
7.50
10.00

 

Girl’s cosmetic kit
1.30
1.50

 

Cheap ball-point pen
.07
.29

 

When one considers that the average wage in Spain is sharply
lower than that in the United States, these prices are on the high
side, but remember that recurring costs like food and lodging are
much cheaper in Spain. Also, practically anything available
anywhere in the world is available in Spain. I saw Norwegian
sweaters, Italian shoes, Argentinian wool, German scissors and
French encyclopedias—all within a few minutes.

 

Consider the case of the fish market where I spent a morning
talking with the proprietor and his stream of customers. It was
run by Armando Olivera and stood at the busy corner of
Sepúlveda and López Prudencio. At first sight it looked as if it
would offer three or four kinds of inexpensive fish; in fact, it had
more than thirty. Señora Gutiérrez wanted some hake, brought
that morning by truck from Huelva on the Atlantic. Señora
Meléndez plumped her shopping bag on the marble counter and
said she wanted a bagful of backbone joints from the huge
swordfish that had come from Portugal. She was making a fish
stew and the joints contained much meat, but when the package
was weighed and paid for, sixteen cents, Olivera chucked in an
extra slice of pure meat, for which he was thanked.

 

At least half the fish available in this shop was frozen, much of
it coming from Norway and Germany. I was surprised to see in
the freezer a large selection of whole frozen chickens from
Denmark, butter from Ireland and frozen meat pies from England,
all at prices sharply lower than they would have been in America.
Spain makes it easy for the foreigner to convert his dollars into
pesetas. In even the smallest town, if it has a bank, one can cash
his traveler’s checks with ease. In Badajoz there were, I judged,
about fifteen banks or offices which performed this service. I used
the Banco Mercantil, the exterior of whose building had impressed
me during my survey of the plaza. Inside, it was as brisk and bright
as a new branch bank in Omaha and much more so than one in
Glasgow. I presented my check and passport to a young man,
who greeted me in English. In less than a minute he typed out
slip #453, handed half to me and passed the other half along to
three different officials, who initialed it and handed it to the teller,
a very busy man. I waited in a long line while the teller dealt with
slips #440 to 452. Finally he called, ‘Cuatro cientos cincuenta y
tres.’ I presented my matching half of the slip and he counted out
the money. ‘We are pleased to have you in Spain,’ he said in
Spanish.

 

I was eager to find out what an average day for a Spanish
businessman consisted of, and on one of my walks I came upon
the Casino de Badajoz, a distinguished men’s club whose broad
plate-glass windows, fronting on the main street, were always
occupied by gentlemen who seemed to do nothing but ogle the
passing girls. Without any kind of introduction I entered the club
and explained my problem to the majordomo, who grasped the
situation at once, offered me a beer and summoned a club official,
a delightful talker whose monologue I shall repeat as he gave it:
‘This club is the heart of Badajoz. Very old, very honorable. It
costs thirty dollars to join and twenty dollars a year dues, but the
waiting list is so long you’d not have a chance right now. As a
foreign visitor, however, you would be most welcome on a
temporary basis. On the second floor, the big television room.
Next to it our enormous ballroom. These red and white
furnishings, the mirrors, the red plush boxes, the stucco figures
on the ceiling…we think these lend a touch of elegance. I don’t
know who carved that “Venus Holding a Mirror” or the huge
“Judgment of Paris,” but they’re old and familiar and lend a sense
of permanence. We have four floors here, all marble, a barbershop,
billiards. At the green tables in this game room a lot of money
has been won and lost. The bar, the library. We get papers from
all over Spain and Paris too. Our restaurant used to do a large
trade, now the snack room does more. We offer much to attract
children and in the evening women are welcomed too. But, as
you can guess, it’s that big front room that establishes the quality
of the club. In the course of a week you’ll see in this room all the
men who run Badajoz. You might almost say Extremadura. Even
the soldiers and the priests you’ll see here. It is marble, has those
five impressive front windows, the big comfortable leather chairs.
The large painting shows a country wooing. I think the man is
playing an oboe. But this is the heart of the club. This is the room
that means more than home to the men of Badajoz.
‘No, the man you ask about is not from Badajoz. You see, each
city in Spain has one top club like this, and if you belong to it in
your home town, you automatically have privileges in all the
others. The man you’re looking at is from Sevilla.