Part 3

The smaller churches are interesting enough, but not striking, and the visitor will do well to prefer the almost deserted Picture Gallery. Until the name of Velasquez dwarfed that of every other Spanish artist, Valencia boasted a school of painting second to none in the country. Ribalta, Juanes, Ribera, Espinosa, and Orrente all lived and loved and painted in the old kingdom. The story of Ribalta is romantic. The son of a ploughman, he deemed himself on the high road to fortune when he entered a Valencian studio as a pupil. But alas! the black eyes and pretty figure of his master’s daughter proved more alluring than canvas virgins. Ribalta was dismissed the studio in disgrace. He wandered towards Italy, the land of promise, and studied under the brothers Carracci. Some years later he returned. His mistress was in possession of the studio, her father having gone out. A wooden and lifeless Madonna stood on an easel. Ribalta seized a brush and painted furiously until sunset, and when the artist returned a masterpiece was awaiting him. Astonishment, admiration, tears, and gratitude--no artist could forbid his daughter’s _fiançailles_ with a man of genius. Ribalta afterwards devoted his whole life to the adornment of the churches of his native kingdom.

But Valencia is hardly less distinguished for its theatre than for its painting. Here at the end of the sixteenth century was founded the celebrated society of “Nocturnes” which welcomed the youth of Lope de Vega. Guillen de Castro was its head, a man of wit and honourable family, whose adventurous life ended in the gutter. He is best known as the author of _Las Mocedades del Cid_, a tedious drama with a fine heroic touch, whence Corneille drew his inspiration.

Leaving Valencia we run southward as far as Alcira without a stop. Here we cross the Jucar, which strikes terror into the hearts of the townsfolk. Rising in the rainy season with terrible rapidity, with constant shiftings of its channel, it sweeps over the countryside, swallowing up whole villages in its destructive, impetuous course. When the sky grows black and the river starts to rise, the panic-stricken inhabitants run to the churches and seize the images. Then with frenzied prayers to the _Pare San Bernard_, they dip the holy forehead in the water, hoping to stay the onrush of the torrent. But the inundated country to-day will in a few years bear heavy rice crops and luxuriant orchards. The swampy unhealthy lagoon, the Albufera (which gave its name to one of Napoleon’s marshals) is becoming filled up with the _débris_ brought down from the mountains. Soon it, too, will be a fertile huerta. Meanwhile, trees are being planted on the rugged hill-side, a wise measure which it is hoped will check the violence of the floods and the denudation of the arid soil.

Jativa will be our next stopping-place. Like most of the towns in this country it is rich in historic interest. Past cottages, embosomed in palm-and orange-trees, you climb up to the hill where the old and new castles stand side by side. Here in 1284 the Infantes de la Cerda, rightful heirs to the throne, were confined by their Uncle Sancho el Bravo. Here too the Duke of Calabria, heir of Naples, languished for ten years after having trusted himself to the honour of Gonzalo de Cordoba, who betrayed him. This was one of the three deeds of which Gonzalo is said to have repented at the last. Indeed the castle of Jativa seems to have greatly troubled his death-bed, for we learn that the second of these three misdeeds was the imprisonment in the same place of the infamous Cæsar Borgia. The Borgias--those super-men of the Renaissance--had their origin in the neighbourhood of Jativa, which also boasts itself the birthplace of the artist Ribera.

The smaller coast towns of Alicante attract the weary traveller by their beautifully sounding names: Benidorm, Villajoyosa--what pleasant chords they strike in the imagination! But time is short. You think of them regretfully and hurry towards the capital. But first, if the month is April, you must turn aside for a flying visit to Alcoy, where every year a mediæval joust takes place to the glory of Saint George (the city’s patron saint) and the discomfiture of the Moors. This is to celebrate the taking of the town from the Moors by Jaime el Conqueridor in 1253.

Alicante, the largest town in the province of that name, and the second in the Kingdom of Valencia, is as dull as most thriving commercial centres. Its broad white quays are thronged with a busy bustling humanity. Touches of vivid colour in the dress of the women, who are labouring like navvies, a burning sun overhead, and the blue of the Mediterranean, make a not unpleasing picture. Behind the town towers an enormous rock--a second Gibraltar--crowned by the old castle of Santa Barbara. A deep fissure in the rock recalls the stubborn siege of 1707, when the English General and all his garrison were blown to pieces by a mine.

Southwards still, to Elche, the City of Palms, or, less poetically, “The Frying-pan!” A mist of heat seems to hang over the little Oriental-looking town. Not even in the palm groves that shut out the desert can you avoid it. These magnificent trees (it has been estimated that there are 80,000 in the belt that encircles the town) provide practically all the palms used by the Christian churches in Passion Week. In the shade of their avenues flourish the laurel, the rose, and the geranium; beyond, extend crops of lucerne and wheat, watered by the carefully regulated Vinalapo.

But though Elche makes an agreeable impression on travellers, in Spain it is chiefly celebrated for its Passion or Mystery Play, the only one of its kind in the kingdom. Elche is under the special protection of Our Lady of the Assumption, who sent her miraculous image over the seas along with the words and music of the opera inscribed _Soy para Elche_ (I am for Elche). To this image, supposed to have been found in 1370 by a coastguard named Canto, many houses and palm plantations round the city belong. They are all marked with a crown and the initials M.V. The image is said to have been carved by St. Luke, but hardly reflects credit on his skill. However, the miracles it performs seem highly satisfactory, judging by the magnificent jewels and garments that have been presented by the faithful.

The opera is presented on August 13 and 14, the eve and the feast of the Assumption. In a country where the sister of Cervantes was allowed to install a theatre in her convent and herself play the leading _rôles_, you are not surprised to find that the representation takes place in the church, which is, however, for the occasion, carefully stripped of sacred images.

The scenery, as in mediæval days, is simple. There is a little cave for the Garden of Gethsemane, a plain coffin for the Holy Sepulchre. Angels playing harps on a blue cloth stretched across the roof betoken the celestial regions. Hence, by an ingenious arrangement of ropes and pulleys, angels will presently come down to take the Virgin up to heaven. Apostles and saints, their names legibly inscribed on cardboard haloes, the holy angels and the Trinity itself have all their appointed parts. The Virgin is a small boy of eleven. Unfortunately that touch of vulgarity which seems inseparable from modern Continental Catholicism liberally decorates the angels with well-greased hair, vivid sashes, and paper flowers of startling hues. However, the crowded audience is not critical and very real emotion at times interrupts the continuous chatter and shaking of fans. There seems something singularly human in a religion so all-embracing.

Orihuela, in its fertile plain, rendered independent of rain by the waters of the Segura, will be our last stopping-place in the southern portion of the kingdom. Here the Goths made a last resistance under Theodomir. Orihuela is the only city in the district where Castilian is spoken. Its square towers and domes shaded with palms are decidedly Oriental in appearance. A visit to the Cathedral shows some beautiful choir-stalls of carved mahogany, but the interior of the building has been hopelessly barbarised. There is little else to detain us here, so we take train again for Valencia and the north.

SAGUNTUM AND CASTELLON

Leaving the city of Valencia, the traveller journeys northwards through one of the most luxuriant garden-plains of southern Europe. Groves of olive, almond, and orange trees crowd thick upon each other, their almost monotonous fruitfulness broken only by an occasional graceful cluster of stately palms. Soon there comes in sight a hill crowned with an irregular line of battlemented walls. Its silhouette is warm against the sky-line. This is Saguntum, famed in story.

You pass out of the station and on your left rise up the eastern slopes of the Saguntine hill. At its feet are huddled the dark green tiled roofs of the village, from among which the little church of San Salvador detaches its quadrangular tower, proudly conscious that (in the eye of its worshippers at least) it is the oldest Christian foundation in the whole of Spain. Tiny cottages gleam white in the dark places of the rocks, between thickets of aloes and prickly-pear. And far above, the reddish walls of the castle with its huge square towers stretch in slanting belts along the summit of the hill, keeping watch over the ever-retreating sea that has so often been studded with the ships of enemies.

To the right, coaches from Teruel and Segorbe lumber along a white ribbon of road, smothered in clouds of dust. Clambering up the fence of masonry that separates populace and passengers a dozen Saguntine youths, burnt by the sun, with eyes like sloes and jet-black hair, hail you in eager tones. They thrust towards you sinewy arms holding cups of milk or wine and plates of savoury meats, with branches of oranges or wands garlanded with fruits and sweet-smelling flowers.

But it is a silent town, Saguntum (or Murviedro as it is generally called), and seems to brood on memories of the past. Founded in 1389 B.C. by the Greeks of Zacynthus, it has been held in turn by Carthaginian and Roman, by Goth, Moor, and Spaniard. Its place in history is unique. The story of its famous siege has repeatedly been told.

It is the year 219 B.C.--the eve of the Second Punic War. Hannibal, having sworn war to the death on Rome, is gathering his forces for a crushing blow. The wealth of Saguntum attracts him; impoverished by the loss of Sicily, its position as frontier town appeals to him as a strategist; as the ally of Rome it draws his hatred. Suddenly a force of a hundred and fifty thousand Carthaginian soldiers is hurled against the town; battering-rams thunder at the gates; huge catapults scatter death among the startled townsfolk. Then begins a struggle that can be compared only with Numantia in ancient or Saragossa in modern times. Force and cunning have met their match in desperate heroism.

The siege lasted for eight months. Rome was appealed to, but her Ambassadors were not allowed to land. They turned to Carthage and entered the Senate House. “I bring you peace or war,” cried Valerius Flaccus; “choose which you will have!” and resounding cries of “War! War!” initiated one of the fiercest struggles of antiquity. But though fighting against a common enemy, Rome deserted her Spanish ally.

A city beseiged is a city doomed. Saguntum could hold out no longer. Hannibal named his terms--life and two garments to each individual. Arms, wealth, and Fatherland must all be given up, and the inhabitants must drift to whatever part of the world the conqueror decreed.

Immediately, by order of the Senate, a scaffold was erected in the public square. All the wealth from the public treasury was flung upon it. Private citizens added their treasures to the holocaust, and with the courage of despair flung themselves into the flames. Then a shout arose from the walls; one of the towers had fallen and the attacking army swarmed over the ramparts to wholesale massacre. Such is Livy’s account, but it is probably an overstatement. For though the Carthaginians, being a Semitic race, were capable of any cruelty, history records that the first act of the Scipios, on rebuilding the town four years later, was to buy back the exiled inhabitants.

Two thousand years later Saguntum was once again the theatre of war, when in 1808 it was attacked and taken by Marshal Suchet. But Napoleon’s success was as ephemeral as Hannibal’s. The French violet could not take root in the granite of Spain.

The present castle is principally Moorish, though some traces of the old Saguntine walls can be distinguished. It is probable that the keep described by Livy occupied the site of the present citadel. There are some old Moorish cisterns to which the girls of the village climb in the evening with water-jars on their shoulders.

A little lower down the hill lies the ancient Roman amphitheatre, the most nearly perfect of its kind that exists to-day, not even excepting those of Italy. The separate entrances that Roman ceremony required for knights and magistrates, for women and for the common people, can still be recognised in spite of the depredations of Suchet and the Philistines. Its thirty-three tiers of bluish grey pebbles, cemented cunningly together to look like huge blocks of stone, rise with the sloping hill-side. The theatregoer of Murviedro had little to complain of in the old days. If the play was tedious, he could turn his eye to the beautiful scenery that lay before him. His lot was enviable beside the Londoner’s.

The plain that now separates Murviedro from the sea is rich in ruins of a bygone age. Desultory excavations have yielded some results. In 1795 a magnificent mosaic was discovered representing Bacchus astride a tiger in the midst of revellers, which, unfortunately, has since been lost. For the antiquary with money at his back and method in his brain a rich and interesting harvest lies waiting.

Leaving Saguntum we continue northwards past the picturesque old castle of Almenara; past Nules, famous for its mineral springs; past Burriana, whose oranges you have eaten in every country of Europe; and the train steams at length into Castellon de la Plana. To the eye this city is uninteresting enough, but the imagination is touched by the recital of its history.

A league to the north of the town the barren mountains of the Desierta rise from an arid plain. Here can be seen some crumbling grey walls and a hermitage in honour of St. Mary Magdalena. The walls mark the site of the old town captured in 1233 by Jaime I. of Aragon. A few years later the inhabitants petitioned the King’s lieutenant for leave to remove their town to the fertile plain on the coast where it now stands. Not only was this granted but considerable privileges were bestowed on the enterprising city.

Every year on the third Sunday in Lent this event is commemorated by the Feast of Las Gayates. Clergy and laity alike, bearing green reeds, proceed in pilgrimage to the hermitage, where a solemn service is celebrated. A gay crowd invades the hill. They sing; they dance; they shout; they eat and drink. After this sylvan feast, they troop back to the town. At nightfall a second procession sets out, in which are represented with all edifying accompaniments the worldly pomps and repentance of the Magdalene. Raised up among a myriad flashing lanterns the “Gayata,” which gives its name to the festival and recalls the removal of the city, is borne along with song and dance.

More than once has Castellon fought bravely in defence of its liberties. A very strenuous resistance was offered to Pedro IV. when the women fought side by side with the men upon the walls. One of the amazon warriors killed a relative of the attacking General, Don Pedro de Boil, and was hanged in the market-place on the fall of the city, along with the other rebel leaders. Considering the part that Spanish women have played in the history of their country, it is curious to remember that voluptuous indolence is supposed to entirely sum up their character. The War of the Brotherhood, that great popular rising, gave three more martyrs to Castellon. It is not, therefore, surprising to find that this city to-day stands, in the province to which it gives its name, for democratic tendencies. So Morella on its rocky throne, the stronghold of the ferocious Carlist chief, Cabrera, stands for aristocratic militarism; and Segorbe, lying in the shadow of the magnificent monastery of Valdecristo, for the ecclesiastical element and clerical control.

THE KINGDOM OF MURCIA

The ancient Kingdom of Murcia, which lies to the south of Valencia, includes the two modern provinces of Murcia and Albacete. It is a wild, fierce region, where the sun’s heat scorches all vegetation from off the hill-sides. Deep and terrible chasms yawn between the rugged mountains; there are sharp and rocky peaks that seem to have been thrown up by sudden upheavals of the earth, and at their feet lie great stretches of tawny desert recalling the burning expanse of the Sahara. The shadow of long-continued drought often broods over the whole kingdom. But yet the district watered by the Segura is an earthly paradise--in spring all flowers, in autumn all fruit. Mingling with the carob-tree and broad-leaved palm glistens the gold of oranges, and luxuriant vines give pleasant promise of a sparkling harvest.

But nature has not thus blessed the land of her own free will. She needed coaxing and much wooing by the cunning Arabs. A wonderful system of irrigation prevails, and science has harnessed fast the wayward rivers. The greatest treasure of the Murcian, water, is sold by auction to the highest bidder. M. Jean Brunhés, in a lately published work, gives some very curious and interesting details relating to this singular system.

The volume of the Monegre is divided into old and new water, the former belonging of right to the ancient riparian proprietors, the latter to the owners of the locks and reservoirs. A very vicious system prevails at Lorca. There, a private company has obtained all rights in the water of Guadalentin, subject to the condition of supplying the old proprietors of the adjoining lands with 500 litres per second every day. Only in rainy seasons, when the company’s barrage is swept away by the torrent (as it usually is some five or six times in the year), does the water become public property. When this happens the company is not allowed to make the barrage any stronger when it is rebuilt. In seasons of drought the owners are masters of the situation, and are able to recoup themselves for the losses thus incurred by forcing up prices to a figure absolutely ruinous to all but the richest cultivators. There is only one palliation to this system, that the bidder who has bought the first lot can buy as many of the lots following as he may desire at the same figure. Notwithstanding this poor concession it would seem that the principle of private ownership has been pushed a little too far in this part of the world.

Here is M. Brunhés’ account of the water auction at Lorca:

“The sale takes place in a badly lit hall with naked walls, on a level with the street, with which it communicates by an immense door almost its own breadth. This door remains open during the sale, and the crowd of bidders stand partly in the street. The hall has no floor; you stand on the bare ground. Opposite the door at the end of the hall is a railed-off daïs, entered by a side door, and without any direct communication with the public side. On the daïs the secretaries are seated at a large table covered by a threadbare green cloth. Behind the table are five arm-chairs. In one is seated the presiding officer (a civil engineer who must own no land in the Vega). On a stool is stationed the crier.

“At eight o’clock in the morning, at a sign from the presiding officer, the crier pronounces these words in a singing monotonous voice, and without any pause between the two phrases: ‘In honour of the Holy Sacrament of the Altar, who buys the first lot of Sotellana?’ Immediately shouts go up, ‘Eight, nine, or ten reales!’ One voice overpowers the other, wide mouths vociferate loudly, necks are strained, muscles grow tense with excitement. The bidders press and crush each other against the iron railing, for the one nearest has the best chance of being heard. The presiding officer listens and follows the frantic shouting with sovereign calm. Suddenly, with a quick gesture, he designates the highest bidder. At once the clamour ceases. Amid absolute silence the man indicated calls out his name, which the clerks write down.

“The men are hatless. Some wear black or dark-coloured handkerchiefs bound round their heads, but all hold their broad-brimmed hats in their hands. No one smokes or talks till the bidding recommences, and even those in the street are silent and bareheaded. It is easy to see that all are peasants. Heads are closely cropped; here are no beards or moustaches, no one wears a collar, and most carry a cloak other than the aristocratic _capa_ on the shoulders or arm. It is a curious and impressive sight enough these bronzed physiognomies, animated by one desire to obtain, as cheaply as may be, possession of the supreme good, water.”

Such is the province of Murcia in the twentieth century. When vegetation depended only on the sun and very infrequent rain, the land can have been very little better than an arid wilderness. And yet its possession has from the earliest times been a matter of keen dispute. To the early inhabitants have always been ascribed those simple guileless virtues with which the eighteenth century endowed the noble savage. Like the high-souled inhabitants of More’s “Utopia,” they used the gold and silver, in which their mountains abounded, for the meanest articles of domestic use. But this admirable custom seems unfortunately to have been based on mere ignorance of the value of their treasures.

More sophisticated were the Phœnicians, who scented the precious metals from afar, and here, as everywhere, established their commercial centres. Next, the Greeks swooped down and planted colonies, rivalry between the two races precipitating the fierce conflict between their respective allies, the Carthaginians and the Romans. New Carthage, or Cartagena, was founded by Hasdrubal; his son made it the starting-place of his famous march to Rome. The city made a brave resistance to Scipio, and its fall marked the downfall of the Carthaginian in Spain.

As an outpost of the Roman Empire this district was one of the first abandoned to the attacks of the barbarians. Under the Visigoths it became a duchy with the name of Aurariola, which offered so determined a resistance to the Mussulman that it was enabled to retain its independence, subject merely to the Khalifa as suzerain. Here, as in so many Iberian sieges, the women played no small part. Dressed as men, they paraded the walls of the city: and by this stratagem enabled Duke Theodomir to obtain such favourable terms.

Perpetuating the memory of this Duke, the province lasted under the name of Todmir some sixty-eight years as a self-governing State. But the last governors allied themselves with Charlemagne. Arab invaders poured in, who soon swamped the Christian population and Todmir was completely absorbed into the Moslem Empire.

A new capital, Murcia, was founded, that soon rivalled Toledo and Cordoba as a manufactory of arms. After undergoing the usual vicissitudes of Moorish States, it was taken in 1266 by Jaime el Conqueridor, and handed over to his son-in-law, the King of Castile. For two hundred years it endured the attacks of the Moors of Granada, acting meanwhile as a buffer to the Christian kingdom.