Hospitality in Spain
"The fonda is the Spanish hotel that comes near to entering the ranks of those that attract foreign custom, but never quite succeeds in doing so. The name is Arabic…
Location: Spain
Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.
"Cafes and Restaurants," from Home Life in Spain by Samuel Levy Bensusan, 1910.
The fonda is the Spanish hotel that comes near to entering the ranks of those that attract foreign custom, but never quite succeeds in doing so. The name is Arabic rather than Spanish, and corresponds with the fandak or caravansarai of Morocco. Here one finds no attempt to vary the regional convention of Spanish cooking; oil plays a large and important part, garlic holds an honourable position, rancid butter is not rejected nor is sour bread despised.
The Englishman who pays his first visit to an old-established Spanish fonda, and be it added that in many parts of Spain there exists nothing else in the way of hostelry, will find himself compelled, despite his appetite, to leave some dishes untouched, and to summon up a certain amount of moral and physical courage to enable him to approach others. His accommodation will not quite realize all the ideals or ambitions of the Sybarite; he will not suffer from excess of attention, though he will be treated with reasonable civility; he may share his exercise in the courtyard with many types of Spanish wayfarer, including formidable-looking agriculturists with ample waistbands and a wealth of black whisker which gives them a peculiarly ferocious appearance and sends the tourist flying to his Baedeker to assure himself once again that there are no brigands left in Spain. But if the quality of the fondas entertainment is not high, the prices do not rise above its level, and most travellers when they have paid their bill will agree, all things considered, that they have had value for their money.
The posada corresponds to the English hotel in a county town, although it is not run on such pretentious lines and is not patronized by sportsmen. Spaniards, who have skins through which nothing can bite, a digestive apparatus that responds to the cooking of their own district, and a spirit of contentment that never leaves them while they have a packet of cigarettes in hand and a glass of wine within reach, thrive in the posada. The slow pace of its life has some fascination for them, and it communicates itself in time to the Englishman who has learned to suffer little inconveniences without grumbling. Nobody hurries in the posada, and time is of no account; there is sun and there is shade; those who are in the sun move slowly because it is too hot; those who are in the shade move hardly at all because it is so cool.
The master of the house, when he is not busily engaged laying down laws for the political salvation of his country, may condescend to give an order or two for the benefit of some fresh visitor; his voice rings out like that of a commander on the quarter-deck. Then you look for a short, tense period of extraordinary activity on the part of the household, but nothing happens, and the posadero resumes his political discussion as though he had left the fate of Empire trembling in the balance.
Somewhere in the dim depths of the posada the maid of all work responds to some summons with a long-drawn out "Voy!" (coming). But she never comes, and no Spaniard would expect her to come. Somewhere in the dining-room, which serves as a kitchen as well, there is a large fireplace presided over by an old Spanish woman, as completely smoke-cured, after half a century's cooking, as the best ham in all Galicia. She too moves with great deliberation: you cannot enter the posada at any hour in the day or any day in the year without finding her to all outward seeming completing the task that was in progress when you left. But she must do more than appears, for the household is fed and visitors are catered for, and some of them are men whose appetites would inspire a British agricultural labourer or commercial traveller with respect.
Chickens have free right of entry into the posada's living room; they do not respect the bedrooms, and unreasonable visitors have been heard to complain instead of rejoicing because some industrious hen has laid an egg on their pillow. Even the pig, though nominally an exile from the guest chamber, contrives to show his intelligent face there now and again, and throughout the low-raftered, stuffy chamber there is a curious odour that is seemingly compounded of stale tobacco, wine, garlic, leather, and lavender. You are conscious of each in turn, but happily in the winter the lavender swallows up the others, and the situation is saved.
Some of the Spanish posadas are of very great age, and preserve to this day their primitive simplicity. Ill-smelling oil lamps still provide the traveller with something that enjoys the courteous title of light when the day is done; modern sanitation is unknown; effective ventilation is regarded with suspicion, and he who would venture to open the livingroom window when the air within is so thick that you can feel the weight of it, would probably find that the window was not made to open, and that nobody else found the warmth intolerable. Perhaps one of the chief points of interest in the posada lies in the fact that it brings the traveller face to face with such types as he will meet nowhere else; types that have not varied since the days when Cervantes saw them as he rested in the Posada de la Sangre in Toledo to write his "Ilustre Fregona". Here is ample consolation for the intelligent traveller.
From the posada to the venta is no far cry, for the venta is no more than a roadside posada, a little point where the highways cross and men gather for a few hours to refresh themselves and exchange news of the world beyond. No shepherd's cot-house in the remote Scottish highlands is more lonely than the venta; it is just a little spot in the heart of the plain or some distant hollow of the hill, known only to those whose life is cast in the world's waste places.
For all that the venta stands deserted by patrons for days on end in the rainy season, it persists through the centuries so that the small house which serves your modest requirements may have satisfied the still more simple needs of Santa Teresa herself. Designed originally with some little pretence to shapeliness that was soon forgotten, added to as the generations passed and some fortunate proprietor found himself with a few pesetas to spare, straggling over a large space of ground, decorated with a very tall chimney that serves as a landmark, being the last point of the building to fade from sight and the first to reveal itself on the horizon, often built of yellow sun-dried clay and whitewashed, the venta does not lack the quality of picturesqueness.
Some long-forgotten proprietor(a man of more than common learning)gave it a name, and wrote that name phonetically in straggling letters that sprawl across the brow of his house in fashion suggesting that they have quarrelled and wish to be as far removed from one another as possible, but as ninty-nine per cent of the venta 's patrons are probably unable to read or write, the title is safe from criticism.
A huge courtyard surrounds the venta, which boasts one very large kitchen wherein a score of travellers may find refreshment and, if need be, sleep; for bedrooms are few and are occupied by the family, and those who would spend a night in the venta wrap themselves in their horse-blankets, commit their body to the hard boards and their soul to their patron saint, and snore with a ferocity calculated to be equally terrifying to robbers and evil spirits. Many and strange are the venta's visitors who seem to pass to and from the back of beyond. What loneliness of life is theirs that they should make the venta a meeting-house; what silence lies weighed so heavily on them all their days that even the unaccustomed gift of company cannot avail to oil the rusty hinges of their tongues. Their order given and a brief greeting exchanged, the teamsters and muleteers and ganaderos who constitute by far the greatest proportion of the venta's patrons, become as silent as the land in which the house is set.
Only towards night, when the surrounding stillness is almost overwhelming, when the carts in the open courtyard borrow some mysterious whiteness from the reflection of the moonlight on the lime-washed walls, when horse or mule stirring' in its stall seems to set one's nerves a-quiver, and the call of the cigarones from the tree-tops is so clear and shrill, a little conversation springs up, desultory and fitful as the wind that wanders over the plain, but in its way a tribute to the brotherhood and loneliness of man.
Though the venta's patrons pass and repass year by year, no man appears to know another's business or to entertain any curiosity regarding it. Life in the wide open spaces, so sparsely populated, seems to develop or retain the latent Orientalism of the Spaniard. To roll endless cigarettes, drink rough wine, sparingly to exchange a few words in tones that suggest preoccupation, greet the belated traveller with a swift glance and a brief nod, sleep for a few hours, and harness the team at break of day so as to be well upon the road before the hours of fire make travel slow and difficult; these are the only things that seem worth doing.
The spirit of Spain's open places is a spirit of melancholy. There is no sadness, but there is a curious sobriety of mien, a strange absence of the joy of life. Perhaps when the feria comes round to the town nearest their home, these sober-visaged countrymen will join in the fun as heartily as any, but the mood of merriment will be short-lived. They are the product of centuries of silence and loneliness; they have learnt to bear the extremes of heat and cold; they have gained strength and self-reliance and endurance by sacrificing the spirit of conviviality and light-heartedness that is so often associated with the Spaniard by those who do not really know the Spanish country-side. Literally and metaphorically the venta and its strange clients stand alone in Spain, and they would seem to be well beyond the reach of time and change.
Turning from the country to the town, we find a striking difference in the places of public entertainment. Nothing can be more gay in its own fashion than the taberna or popular cafe of the lower orders, where the wine and spirits sold are adulterated to an extent that might well seem impossible in a land of vineyards. The tabernas consist for the most part of one long, low room sprinkled with bare tables at which the patrons drink their bad wine or vile spirits, including the notorious aguardiente(Spain's substitute for gin)and eat raw ham, garlic sausage, tripe, and tortillas; the potato cake, of which the exact method of making has been described already in another chapter.
There is no music in the taberna, but dominoes and cards are very popular, and in addition to such card games as tute and brisca there is a little indulgence, under the rose, in the forbidden delights of banca, which is the same as the English game of bluff. It would be hard to say when the taberna closes its doors. Quite late in the night, when the most of a night-loving people have gone to bed, the lights of a taberna may be seen battling doggedly with the smoke of innumerable cigarettes, and quite early in the morning the workman on his way to his daily labours may be found seeking the refreshment afforded by a cup of weak tea or a small glass of crude spirit. Perhaps the house finds a few hours of rest during the extreme heat of the day when the place is left to the charge of one man who, on being called, rouses himself from uneasy dreams to say he is coming, and forthwith goes to sleep again.
Another house of entertainment of still lower class is the bun shop, where at any hour of the night in a big city chocolate, coffee, milk, and cakes may be procured. Even these places have their hour of repute: respectable citizens of small means will take their wives there for a few moments on the road home from the theatre, but after one o'clock in the morning the gathering is not of a nature that commends itself to those who are careful of their company, and the police keep a careful eye upon the bun shops, substituting a heavy hand from time to time.
There are plenty of cafes of the kind one knows in France, and the most of these boast a billiard-room, for billiards is a game at which the Spaniard excels. In the summer the little round tables of these cafes stretch out over the pavement, and the scene they present from sunset until one a.m. differs in no essentials from that which is familiar to the boulevardier.
German influence is very strong in Spain, where many of the public works have been taken over in recent years by German commercial firms, and one of the most significant results of the German invasion is the beer garden or cerveceria. Even the Spaniard, long-suffering by temperament and necessity, cannot endure for ever the adulterated wines and spirits that are offered to him in the taberna, and the light beers of Germany please him the more because there is very little strength in them. Quite insensibly perhaps he is being influenced by this new form of refreshment, and the scene in one of the beer gardens of Madrid, Barcelona, Bilbao, or Seville recalls Bavaria.
If the writer were a poet, or if he could call the muses from Parnassus, or even invoke the shade of old-time Horace or the comparatively modern Herrick, he would devote all the inspiration obtainable to a hymn of praise directed to los pasteles de Espana (Spanish pastry). Travel where you may, north, south, east, or west, from the patissiers of the Paris Boulevards to the pastry-cook shops in the bazaars of Damascus, where the traditions of the Arabian Nights still linger, pass in review the famous confectioners of the world's most prosperous cities, and surely you will not hesitate in the end to pay the tribute of fullest appreciation to the handiwork of the Spanish pastelero. He is a mighty craftsman, dearer to many of his countrymen than Velasquez or El Greco, the Escurial or the Patio de los Leones that is in Granada. The work of his hands is perfect, too subtle for analysis, too delicate for adequate expression of its fine shades save by some great artist who can use words or paint or set musical notes with the same delicacy and certainty of touch that the pastelero employs in handling cream, chocolate, preserved fruit and exquisitely flavoured and proportioned essences.
Strange it is that in a country of coarse national dishes, where garlic plays an important part in the national life, and uncooked meat is not regarded as an abomination, the delicate art of the pastelero should thrive and reach such a perfect state. Surely when the history of Spain comes to be written hundreds of years hence, we shall learn that the closing years of the nineteenth century and the opening decade of the twentieth were remarkable, less for the loss of the Philippines, the Spanish-American War, and the Anglo-Spanish Alliance than for the golden age of pastry.
In the cool depths of the pastry-cook's shop, rank, fashion, and beauty assemble every afternoon, and to the accompaniment of a light babble of conversation, the world's most wonderful pastry achieves its appointed end. It would be hard to say whether the pastry, the conversation, or the spray from the fountain that cools the air in many pasteleria is the lightest. Some people drink sweet wine with their pastry, but this is a vile error that deserves correction at the hands of an Inquisition. Iced water is indicated, for this alone can clear the palate and make it properly susceptible to every fresh seductive influence. For those who take sweet wine or chocolate, the epicure can at best have no more than a small measure of pity mingled with a large leaven of contempt. Long may the pastelero thrive, wide may his fame extend, happy be his end and everlasting his fame.
The restaurant as it exists in France is not popular with the rank and file of Spaniards, who prefer to offer their friends a simple meal at their own table rather than to take them to a restaurant where the national dishes may be manhandled by an unsympathetic cook. Here regionalism plays its part. In a cosmopolitan city you will find Castilians, Galicians, Aragonese, Catalans and the rest, each one with his faith pinned closely to the special dish of his district, and accepting as an article of faith the theory that no cook who is not one of his countrymen can present that dish in a satisfactory manner.
The proprietor of a restaurant, though he have all the good intention in the world, cannot afford to carry regionalism into his kitchen, so he seeks to find a cook who can please all patriotic Spaniards, a task that would have baffled Soyer himself. Then again, a modern cook with a French training has an eye upon visitors from France and England and no respect for the sacrosanct Spanish belief that oil is far superior to butter. So the fashionable restaurant does not fare very well; indeed, two or three suffice to serve the whole of Madrid, and these are patronized very largely by people who come to the capital from other countries in search of business or pleasure.
Suburban restaurants are essentially Spanish in character. They are generally to be found in an ample garden filled with orange and lemon-trees and sweet-smelling shrubberies. There is a dancing-hall attached to them, and provision is made for illuminating the gardens at night. If the restaurant possesses any points of vantage, such as a view over the high road along which the bulls are driven from tablada to Plaza de Toros on the night before a fight, pagodas are set up and here supper parties assemble to see the encierro, while the less fortunate patrons of the gardens must leave their supper and gather around the hedge separating their pleasaunce from the road.
In Madrid, only a few years ago, there was a restaurant in the Ventas del Espiritu Santo whose proprietor could not afford his guests any glimpse of the encierro because the bulls did not come that way. But his garden overlooked the Campo del Este, one of Madrid's great burial grounds, so he put a large notice board up with the title of his house on the top and underneath the words "con vistas al otro mundo" (with a view on the other world). One regrets to add that the authorities compelled the enterprising man to remove the announcement of this added attraction and to compete unaided with his rivals. Small wonder that the Government enjoys perennial unpopularity when it can commit such an outrage as this.
The restaurants mentioned here are known in Spain as viveros, and are the scene of the banqueting that plays such an important part in Spanish social life. When a man thinks he has achieved or deserved a reputation, a banquet is given in his honour. Not infrequently he pays all the expenses and provides the ample meal for those who feel that they can no longer live without honouring him. But the newspapers whose representatives are invited, view the proceedings with the eye of diplomacy, toleration, and benevolence, and in their report of the entertainment treat it as a spontaneous compliment paid by the countless admirers of the worthy gentleman who has footed the bill. These little deceits deceive nobody and are good for trade.
When the summer lays its scorching hand upon Spain the demand for cool drinks is universal. In park and garden, even in the streets, water is sold by the glass, and for those who have a few pence to spare there are countless refrescos (iced drinks). Barley water and lemonade play a considerable part in assuaging the national thirst; but perhaps the most popular drink is horchata, made with a certain bean flour called chufa which is mixed with water, cooled with ice and sucked through straws or wafers.
Cone-shaped wafers (barquillos) are sold in the streets, and the buyer finds the number that he can purchase for a penny regulated by his luck. The seller carries a wheel with an indicator that can be turned round rapidly and stops in front of one of the numbers with which the disk is marked, and according to the number indicated the buyer takes his wafers. The cry of the barquillero is one of the few street cries left to modern Spain, and certainly the most popular. Pausing for a moment to deal with street cries, that of the flower-seller can hardly be forgotten by those who have heard it. The flower-seller drives or leads a donkey with paniers loaded with flowers in pots. "Flores vendo!" he cries, with a peculiar intonation impossible to set down without the aid of musical annotation. How the sound comes back to me as I write!
Another favourite summer drink is water that owes the opalescent tint beloved of the absintheur to a few drops of aguardiente. Those who have a sweet palate often add an azucarillo the popular Spanish cake, made with white of egg and sugar.
Old Spanish prints often show us some thirsty wayfarer holding an earthenware jar high above his head and allowing the water to fall down his throat without giving any work to the mouth. Inexperienced people who have never learnt this difficult art would probably choke if they essayed it, but a special providence watches over thirsty Spaniards who can empty a small botijo in this fashion without any effort. When all is said and done, agua fresca remains the Spanish national drink, and as the adulteration of wine and spirits proceeds apace, the Spaniard turns more and more to the one thirst-quencher that never fails. Perhaps the influence of Moorish occupation is seen here too; certainly the habit of water-drinking is the one Spanish custom that defies regionalism, extending from the Basque Provinces to Malaga, and from Valencia to the frontiers of Portugal.
Bensusan, Samuel Levy. Home Life in Spain. MacMillan, 1910.
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