Three Hundred
Thousand People In Madrid Submit Year After Year To This Nightly Cross,
And I Have Never Heard A Voice Raised In Protest, Nor Even In Defence Of
The Custom.
There is often a bitterness of opposition to evident improvement which
is hard to explain.
In the last century, when the eminent naturalist
Bowles went down to the Almaden silver-mines, by appointment of the
government, to see what was the cause of their exhaustion, he found that
they had been worked entirely in perpendicular shafts instead of
following the direction of the veins. He perfected a plan for working
them in this simple and reasonable way, and no earthly power could make
the Spanish miners obey his orders. There was no precedent for this new
process, and they would not touch it. They preferred starvation rather
than offend the memory of their fathers by a change. At last they had to
be dismissed and a full force imported from Germany, under whose hands
the mines became instantly enormously productive.
I once asked a very intelligent English contractor why he used no
wheelbarrows in his work. He had some hundreds of stalwart navvies
employed carrying dirt in small wicker baskets to an embankment. He said
the men would not use them. Some said it broke their backs. Others
discovered a capital way of amusing themselves by putting the barrow on
their heads and whirling the wheel as rapidly as possible with their
hands. This was a game which never grew stale. The contractor gave up in
despair, and went back to the baskets. But it is in the official regions
that tradition is most powerful. In the budget of 1870 there was a
curious chapter called "Charges of Justice." This consisted of a
collection of articles appropriating large sums of money for the payment
of feudal taxes to the great aristocracy of the kingdom as a
compensation for long extinct seigniories. The Duke of Rivas got
thirteen hundred dollars for carrying the mail to Victoria. The Duke of
San Carlos draws ten thousand dollars for carrying the royal
correspondence to the Indies. Of course this service ceased to belong to
these families some centuries ago, but the salary is still paid. The
Duke of Almodovar is well paid for supplying the baton of office to
the Alguazil of Cordova. The Duke of Osuna - one of the greatest grandees
of the kingdom, a gentleman who has the right to wear seventeen hats in
the presence of the Queen - receives fifty thousand dollars a year for
imaginary feudal services. The Count of Altamira, who, as his name
indicates, is a gentleman of high views, receives as a salve for the
suppression of his fief thirty thousand dollars a year. In consideration
of this sum he surrenders, while it is punctually paid, the privilege of
hanging his neighbors.
When the budget was discussed, a Republican member gently criticised
this chapter; but his amendment for an investigation of these charges
was indignantly rejected. He was accused of a shocking want of
Espanolismo. He was thought to have no feeling in his heart for the
glories of Spain. The respectability of the Chamber could find but one
word injurious enough to express their contempt for so shameless a
proposition; they said it was little better than socialism. The
"charges" were all voted. Spain, tottering on the perilous verge of
bankruptcy, her schoolmasters not paid for months, her sinking fund
plundered, her credit gone out of sight, borrowing every cent she spends
at thirty per cent., is proud of the privilege of paying into the hands
of her richest and most useless class this gratuity of twelve million
reals simply because they are descended from the robber chiefs of the
darker ages. There is a curious little comedy played by the family of
Medina Celi at every new coronation of a king of Spain. The duke claims
to be the rightful heir to the throne. He is descended from Prince
Ferdinand, who, dying before his father, Don Alonso X., left his babies
exposed to the cruel kindness of their uncle Sancho, who, to save them
the troubles of the throne, assumed it himself and transmitted it to his
children, - all this some half dozen centuries ago. At every coronation
the duke formally protests; an athletic and sinister-looking court
headsman comes down to his palace in the Carrera San Geronimo, and by
threats of immediate decapitation induces the duke to sign a paper
abdicating his rights to the throne of all the Spains. The duke eats the
Bourbon leek with inward profanity, and feels that he has done a most
clever and proper thing. This performance is apparently his only object
and mission in life. This one sacrifice to tradition is what he is born
for.
The most important part of a Spaniard's signature is the rubrica or
flourish with which it closes. The monarch's hand is set to public acts
exclusively by this parafe. This evidently dates from the time when
none but priests could write. In Madrid the mule-teams are driven tandem
through the wide streets, because this was necessary in the ages when
the streets were narrow.
There is even a show of argument sometimes to justify an adherence to
things as they are. About a century ago there was an effort made by
people who had lived abroad, and so become conscious of the possession
of noses, to have the streets of Madrid cleaned. The proposition was at
first received with apathetic contempt, but when the innovators
persevered they met the earnest and successful opposition of all
classes. The Cas-tilian savans gravely reported that the air of
Madrid, which blew down from the snowy Guadarra-mas, was so thin and
piercing that it absolutely needed the gentle corrective of the
ordure-heaps to make it fit for human lungs.
There is no nation in Europe in which so little washing is done. I do
not think it is because the Spaniards do not want to be neat.
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