Part 1

PICTURESQUE SPAIN

PICTURESQUE SPAIN

ARCHITECTURE * LANDSCAPE LIFE OF THE PEOPLE

BY K. HIELSCHER

T. FISHER UNWIN LTD LONDON : : ADELPHI TERRACE

MOST HUMBLY DEDICATED TO HIS MAJESTY KING ALFONSO XIII. OF SPAIN

Spain is one great open-air museum containing the cultural wealth of the most varied epochs and peoples. On the walls of the Altamira cave is blazoned that much admired steer painted thousands of years ago by men of the Ice Age. In Barcelona stand the fantastic buildings of neo-Castilian present-day art. Celts, Iberians, Romans, Carthaginians, Moors and Goths have fought and struggled for supremacy in Spain. Of all this the stones tell us to-day. They are the chronicles. They relate of bitter strife; of the culture and art aspirations belonging to times gone by. Much has vanished into dust and ruin. That which has survived time’s fretting tooth serves as a giant bridge to lead us back to the past.

Fate was kind enough to let me spend five years in Spain. Caught there by the war while engaged in studies, I was cut off from home. I made use of my involuntary stay to become acquainted with the country in its furthermost corners. I roved to and fro from the pinnacles of the Pyrenees to the shores of Tarifa, from the palm forest of Elché to the forgotten Hurdes inhabitants of Estremadura.

On all my lonely wanderings I was accompanied by my faithful camera: we covered over 45000 kilometres together in Spain. We kept our eyes open diligently. I say we, for in addition to mine was a precious glass eye in the shape of the Zeiss lens. Whereas my eyes only made me the intellectual recipient of what we saw, that of my travelling companion made it a pictorial permanency. I took over 2000 photographs during our peregrinations. This volume only presents a small selection. It was not easy to make the final choice. Many a picture had to be omitted to which I was attached, either for its peculiarity or its character.

I went at no one’s instigation through Spain but that of my own in search of the beautiful. I was not guided by any constraining professional principles. Beautiful art treasures, geographical peculiarities, enchanting landscapes, interesting customs that attracted my attention were retained by my camera. I followed the same lines in making my selections for publication.

I entitle this volume “Picturesque Spain". Much will be unknown to many. I begin however with a spot famous throughout the world.--And yet I was bound to. Like the pilgrim who is drawn to the fabled Fontana Trevi once he has drunk of its waters, so too was I drawn again and again to Granada in my wanderings. I believe too that I have succeeded in presenting the Alhambra from one or two different points of view. Who indeed could exhaust this well of beauty?

Nor could I pass heedlessly by Cordoba, Seville and Toledo, for these towns are starting points.--Finger-posts to unknown Spain. Without these monuments of ancient times, those parts of Spain situate far from the high-roads remain an almost insolvable riddle.

My pictures must speak for me. Those who know how to ask them will find that they tell much. For this reason I shall limit myself to but a few initiatory words. They serve to connect the known with the unknown; to throw light on the paths along which I journeyed in Spain.

=Granada!= Thy name is music; a joyous chord of beauty! To pass the spring within thy gateways is to walk the heights of life.

Spring has cast a shower of blossoms over the town and woven a delicate green carpet around the Alhambra. How many many centuries has it not worshipped thus yearly at the feet of the castle? Long ago passionate Moorish women decorated their raven hair there with rosy almond blossoms.--It is long since that the glory of those days has departed. Perhaps this is why the castle walls look down so sadly at the beauty of this blissful vernal soil.

Bidding defiance in the grandeur of their strength the towers of the Alhambra arise. Their fiery red lights skywards like the flames on giant altars.[A]

Is it possible that these massive cyclopean walls should hide a fairy-land?

Impatiently we climb the castle mount. Reaching an old stone gateway ornamented with pomegranates, the noise of the streets is left behind as we enter a yew grove whose ancient giant stems are ivy-grown; blue myrtle covers the ground, the lights gleam golden through the foliage, the wind murmurs among the branches, nightingales sing in the boscage, swallows dart twittering over the tree tops, water hurries babbling down the hilly slope.

All this seems like a miracle in Spain so poor in forests. It is as though another world had opened its gates.

The great Gate of Judgment is passed, and an inconspicuous door leads to the Court of the Myrtles. Here one feels surrounded by the spirit of the Orient. Delicate jasper and alabaster columns support the airy arches which are swung like lace veils from arcade to arcade. The emerald-green waters of the fountain gaze dreamily skywards and at all the bright beauty of the scene.

Then there is the Court of the Lions, subject of so many songs, with the filigreed architecture of its covered walks. Enchanting in its delicate tracery and beauty, it is a fairy-tale, a poem in stone, infinitely rhythmic with music. And indeed, music is the only language that can render such beauty.

The magnificent halls are full of a wealth of ornamentation. The walls are rainbow-like with the colours of Persian carpets and Cashmere shawls. Arabic inscriptions are scrolled along these labyrynths of colour, praising in exalted words the mystic beauty of the halls. One runs joyously: “God has filled me with such a plentitude of beauty that even the stars stay in their course enchanted to gaze on me."

Once beautiful sultanas looked out from the “Seat of Admiration" (as the Arabs called that jewel of the Alhambra, the Mirador de Daraca,) into the pretty garden filled with the heavy scent of roses, jasmines and oleanders. A swaying mass of tangled climbing plants are festooned from laurel to cypress, and from cypress to orange-tree. In the middle there is a marvellously delicate fountain basin from the edges of which the water slides and drips with tuneful sound as if it fain would tell of long forgotten beauteous days.

We leave the glittering fairy-palace full of memories of the Arabian Nights, and our lips whisper the wish of the Arabic poem writ over a little niche:

“May Heaven’s blessings rest upon these castle halls As long as pilgrims wend their way to Mecca’s walls!"

Nay, as long as clouds sail the skies, and seekers after beauty rove on earth!

This is the mood one is in when climbing further up the mountain to the Moorish summer palace, the Generalife.

We are met, as it were, and shown the way by a double row of slim black-green cypress--dark trees of silence.

The Generalife is enthroned far up on the heights, and embedded in terrace-shaped gardens.

The gardens! In them nature has enfolded all her abounding wealth of colour. Crimson-ramblers, wistarias, vines and ivy smother the walls. Mangolias, oleanders, almond trees, laurels, cypresses, araucarias, olive trees, agaves, palms and mimosa vie with one another for precedence. Flaming pomegranate blossoms, blood-red roses, violet mallows, blue fleurs-de-lis, white jasmine, yellow narcissi, and golden oranges in dark green foliage are a riot of colour. Ball shaped myrtles surround the little fountain, listening to the babbling of its silver waters, and in the twigs the song of birds greeting nature in her holiday garments.

Wondrous peace broods o’er this land. Through trees and halls and wall arches there is a magnificent view of the Alhambra and the multi-coloured houses of the town at its feet, and further on to the picturesque Albaicin, and over cactus-grown Sacromonte with its gypsy cave-dwellings, and still further to the snow-capped Sierra Nevada. Another glance shows the fertile plains of the Vega through which the clear waters of the Genil flow.

However full of radiant happiness the day may have been, it is outshone by the sinking sun casting a golden halo over the country-side. The walls of the Alhambra, once so fiercely fought for, stand forth as though dipped in blood. The distant mountains glitter golden-bronze, and the snowy sides of the Sierra Nevada scintillate in flames. Slowly the fair fires die down, and a chill spectral white falls upon the snow summits. The eventide is there and with it the stars.

The Spaniards have coined a proud sentence: “Quien no ha visto Granada, no ha visto nada!" He who has not seen Granada has seen nought! And I should like to add: He who has seen Granada and the Alhambra on sunny spring days, bears with him a talisman to ward off sorrows in dull days, and can never be completely unhappy again in life.

* * * * *

The =Mosque, Cordova=. A nation set forth to convert the world to its faith. Its battle-cry in this holy war was Allah! Victory after victory was gained, till finally the triumphal march of fanaticism was stopped by the opposing faith of its religious adversaries. The waves receded, and the Cross triumphed over the Crescent. This struggle of two faiths and two continents left indelible marks on the fields of battle.

These wars had been carried on in the name of God. Sacred edifices were erected to the victor. On the ruins of the mosque arose the most beautiful cathedral in the world as token of victory. Spain never would have received the impress she bears to-day without those bitter religious wars.

Cordova was the jewel among Moorish occidental towns, destined to outshine the sister cities Damascus and Bagdad in the far Orient. It was here that all the wealth and pomp of Moorish domination was displayed. Cordova’s population exceeded a million souls. It was the seat of Arabic art and profound learning; the centre of religious life. The muezzin called the faithful to prayers from 3000 minarets. Cordova became a new Mecca which drew crowds of pilgrims from the East to the West.

What has now become of this metropolis? A shadow! Wandering through narrow streets of the town one seems to be in Cordova of a thousand years ago. The old cobbled pavements are probably the same, the houses too, behind whose trellised windows the harem was hidden. The old crooked, narrow and confused mass of streets are still there. Once in a while a palm is seen leaning over white walls across the street; open doors offer views into pleasant court-yards.

The Mezquita, the Mosque, stands like a dark rock surrounded by the white trembling light of the sea of houses.

A wonderful gateway leads to the Orange Court. The fruit and flowers of these trees perfume the air with incense. High up, backed by the blue sky, the palm trees are waving in the wind. Fountains are plashing. Once they served to refresh burnoosed dusty and foot-sore pilgrims come from afar to serve their God here. The faithful bathed in these fountains before purifying their souls in Allah’s house.--Now the fountains are perpetually surrounded by the town maidens who come to fetch a cooling draught in their finely curved earthenware jugs.

The impression on entering the forest of columns that support the mosque is both unexpected and overpowering. Is this not a petrified palm wood? And does not this stony grove incorporate the conception of infinity? There is a mystic dusk among these columns that lends to them an endless space of silence and eternity: the symbol of belief.

It is to the credit of the victorious Christians that they did not cool their religious ardour by destroying this Islamitic place of worship. It is extremely regrettable that their descendants have treated this monument of Mohammedan culture with such carelessness.

The mosque became a Christian church. Where once the cry of “Allah illah Allah!" echoed thousandfold, “Praise be the Lord!" is now sung. The first deed was to erect altars in the door-niches. Then seventy pillars were laid low, and a choir with the High-Altar erected in their stead: a church within a church. Charles V. was reluctant to give his permission for these alterations. When he came to Cordova and saw what had been done, he exclaimed in perturbation: “What you are building can be seen anywhere. You have destroyed what was unique in the world."[B]

Untouched in its pristine beauty, hidden in semi-darkness, not far from the Holy of Holies of the Christian church, stands the Holy of Holies of the mosque, the Mihrab or prayer-niche in which the Koran was kept. It is a jewel of Moorish art. Whereas the rest of the mosque columns are connected by double horse-shoe arches, banded in red and white, here the beautifully chased dentated arches rise straight to the lovely curved dome. The niche socle is white marble of lace-like texture above which a profusion of colours glow: blood-red, rust brown, dark blue violet interwoven with a sublime sheen of gold. Perhaps the mosaic walls and lettered scrolls upon them have in some mystical manner caught the light of the thousand swinging lamps that once had cast their soft rays through the dim shades of space. For six long centuries all these glowing colours were hidden. Before Cordova was surrendered to the Christians the sanctuary was walled up. It was only discovered in 1815.

We pass entranced along the colonnaded aisles, enthraled by the wondrous beauty of this miracle in stone. It is like awakening from a fantastic dream to set foot again in the blinding sun of the silent town that has become the shrine of one of the most precious jewels in the world (50-60).

* * * * *

=Moorish scenes far from the beaten track=: A burning hot day in August.--The air trembles in the heat over the olive trees. The day hangs heavy in the blue vault of heaven. I had been wandering for long long hours, when all of a sudden my eyes were caught by a fata morgana: wafted perhaps from the coast of Morocco? No, it was no mirage. Impossible! Yet it did not disappear as I approached. Strange indeed was the scene: houses scattered like dice over a mountain (91).

A timid lad of whom I asked the name of the spot, slunk shyly past me. My map was of no assistance to me. At last I was informed that I had arrived at “la muy noble y bel ciudad Mochagar, llave y amparo del reino de Granada". “What," I asked “this hamlet still calls itself the key and guardian of the kingdom of Granada? But that kingdom was destroyed half a thousand years ago when the Moors were driven from Granada."

A miracle must have happened here that time should have remained stationary. Here was the pure Moorish impress. Most of the houses are windowless. The flat roofs are sometimes the road to the higher houses, and always their foot-stool. And although the water of baptism has wetted the women’s hair, they pass veiled in the Moorish fashion along the streets. With tucked up skirts and naked legs they step lightly along the steep alleys, returning from the fountains with water amphorae. They eye the foreign trespasser suspiciously and curiously. And when I requested the veiled women to let me take their photographs they stared at me, for they had never even seen a camera. I showed them a picture, and explained that I wanted to have theirs too. They refused. Finally one girl agreed. But an old scold hurried up and beat her for her frowardness: throwing herself away like that! In this Christian country I found shamefacedness and adherence to the laws of Mohammed. Let no mortal body serve as an image!

An old man with whom I spoke about this incident told me that if a girl no longer veiled her face, but hid her legs, there was not much left to spoil about her.

But I was determined that I would not leave without a picture of one of the veiled beauties. At last I succeeded, with the consent of the mother of one of the girls. The eye of my camera winked slyly when I took my snap-shot. In thanking the girl, I held out my hand, but she seemed quite taken aback, and hid her hands behind her. I pressed her to shake hands. I should not do her any harm. But her mother apologized for her saying: “No, she doesn’t mean to be rude, but it is not the custom in our country for a girl to let a man touch her hand before marriage." Perhaps this little incident explains the once much-used expression employed by wooers “will you give me your daughter’s hand?" (90)

* * * * *

=The Palm Forest of Elché= (100-103). The only palm forest in Europe. It numbers more than 115000 trees, and is also a Moorish heritage. They caused the water to flow to this spot from a distance of 5 kilometres in order to create an oasis here in the desert--for the district is to-day little else. Palms must grow with their roots in the water and their crowns in the glaring sun. For years no rain has fallen on this spot.

The view is strange from the church-tower down on white houses over which the palm tops are spread like a canopy. Beyond the palm forest the grey-yellow desert plain surrounds this isle of peace. In the far distance the blue ocean sleeps in proud majesty. Death and life are here in close juxtaposition.

* * * * *

=Easter in Seville.= The train is rushing southwards over the arid Castillian high plateaux, which in summer are as empty as a beggar’s palm. The bare treeless Mancha has put on its modest spring garment which now shows in the distance like delicate green velvet. A short-lived joy! In but a few weeks the scorched ground will again be covered with a yellowish-gray pall.

At present the fresh breeze comes down from the mountains of the Sierra de Guadarrama. Scarcely, however, has the train wound its way through the wild cañons of the Sierra Modena, when spring opens wide her gate. A warm damp hot-house atmosphere is wafted into the carriage windows.

We are soon surrounded by meadows that are like a great flower-garden in which the blood-red poppy and golden-yellow primrose struggle for supremacy. Once in a while a village is seen dreaming like Sleeping Beauty among the flower groves. For a long stretch agaves and cacti fringe the track. Finally Seville sends forth her messengers in the shape of blossoming rose-gardens and orange groves laden with their ripe golden fruit. An ancient mangolia stretches a rosy blossom branch towards us, lingering on in its old age in this scene so full of yearning life. Tall slim palms nod to us, and yet new children of Flora crowd upon us to bring us Seville and spring’s friendly welcome.

Heedlessly the train clatters past all this beauty towards the white maze of Seville’s houses, above which towers that beautiful emblem of the town, the Giralda. At last the engine snorts noisily into the station.

But how different is everything to-day in front of the station. No yelling hotel porters, no carriages awaiting the passengers, no electric-car with clanging bell, no hooting of motor-cars.--The square is lifeless at this early afternoon hour. It is the “Semana santa", Passion-week, that has cast this almost oppressive spell of silence over the great city. Even the brazen voices of the church-bells are muffled, as though that had gone into sacred mourning. The wooden banging of the Matraca calls hoarsely to prayers with dry and unmelodious voice.

The further you penetrate into the town, the more the sacred holiday stillness is ousted. All Seville is crowding, chattering and laughing to the Cathedral to see the procession. At last you have to stop. There is no getting through the impenetrable human wall. It is a strange procession that is passing by, as though conjured up from the Middle Ages. Huddled figures stalk past slowly and stiffly. They appear like spectres. Old pictures of witches and inquisitionary trials are recalled to my mind, for nowhere else have I ever seen such terrifying apparitions; never in life. Black cowls are wrapped around their bodies, and on their head are huge black conical hats a yard high. Long sable cloths, in which only two eyelets are pierced, are suspended over their faces down to their waists. A corded rope is wound round the penitential garments. The hands of the apparitions clasp rough wooden crosses, or metal staves, as tall as themselves. These figures march in front of a portable dais on which a life-like statue of the Virgin Mary is enthroned clad in magnificent garments thickly encrusted with gold.--The procession stops. The dais is lowered. A young woman steps from the crowd, turns her eyes to the Queen of Heaven and sings her praise.

When the twenty or thirty bearers who carry the heavy dais on their shoulders, and who are hidden by drapery suspended round the frame, have rested enough, the signal to start is given by knocking on the front of the dais. A jerk, and the procession moves on a few paces. One religious body of brethren follows on the heels of the other. Each of them wear their own distinctive multi-coloured badges. Some have a blue pointed hat, others white, brown, violet or other coloured garments. Next to a father his ten-year old son in the same vestments is often seen, as well as the miniature penitent of fifteen in the procession.

The various brotherhoods are filled with an ardent ambition to outdo the others in the magnificence of their Pasos as the daises are called. The whole story of the Passion from Gethsemane to the burial of our Lord, is shown on them as they pass before our eyes.--Of course the clergy in full canonicals, as well as the town and state officials are also represented in the procession. At intervals, groups of Roman legionaries of Christ’s day appear, then angels, and St. Veronica carrying the kerchief. Interspersed bands bray and flourish the same march without cess.

Each brotherhood in the procession is cerimoniously received by the chief authority of the town in Constitution Square which looks like a huge theatre auditorium. It is filled with rows of chairs of which not a single one is empty. The surrounding balconies are a sea of heads.

Hour by hour passes. Night falls. And now hundreds of wax-candles blaze forth on the daises, and each penitent carries a gigantic taper in his hand. Thus this endless and mysterious procession of lights moves on to the cathedral, passes through its magnificent nave, and out again through the other doors into the streets.

The cathedral has opened its treasure-house for the “Semana santa" and displayed all its pomp. The candles of the gigantic bronze candelabrum (the renowned Tenebrario) as well as on the altar the sacred wax-candle weighing several hundredweight. A huge sepulchre has been erected to the glory of Christ, in which the Holy of Holies is kept during Passion week. Hundreds of lamps and candles illuminate the golden-white four-storey edifice, which is over 30 metres high, and flooded with a wondrous glowing halo.

The celebrated miserere of Eslava is performed in the cathedral on the night of Good Friday. But, alas! it is impossible to enjoy the sacred tunes owing to the general noisy inattention around. Weary forms are sitting on the steps of the chapels and around the grave of Columbus. Here a mother is suckling her infant, there an animate heap of rags is wrapt in sleep, and all the while there is a continual pushing and elbowing to get to the front.