Agriculture in Southern Spain
"Although this chapter sets out another aspect of Spanish life, its story still lingers round Doquiera, where the toil and travail of the day assume many varied aspects. Our village…
From: 1910 C.E. To: 1910 C.E.
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 It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.
"Life in the Countryside," from Home Life in Spain by Samuel Levy Bensusan, 1910.
Although this chapter sets out another aspect of Spanish life, its story still lingers round Doquiera, where the toil and travail of the day assume many varied aspects. Our village is fortunate beyond the most that lie in little white heaps upon the sierra, like the tiny white eggs on an ant-hill. For some of the land around the village belongs to the villagers themselves. The plots are small; small as those that the Italian labourer builds up with so much labour and love in terraces along the mountain-side.
But the produce of each little holding suffices, though not too fully, to keep the pangs of hunger from some tapia hovel of the kind we have visited, and out of the labourer's long day in the field comes the wherewithal to purchase the pig whose precious limbs hang smoked from the ceiling, whilst some of the less distinguished parts of his corpulent body have been treated in manner known best to the Spanish housewife, and stand in covered jars upon the kitchen shelf or in the cellar. In the cellar, too, the tar-lined earthenware vats, filled with the pure juice of the grape, are replenished out of the proceeds of labour on the small plot, which, although it may be scattered and one part may be half an hour from another, would not, if put all together, cover a couple of acres. In Doquiera there is no agrarian problem. Less fortunate country districts have a landowner who employs all the available male labour in the neighbourhood, paying no better wages than will suffice to keep body and soul on terms of acquaintance rather than intimacy.
In such parts any small plot belonging to a labouring man must be worked by his wife, and when we remember that it may be half an hour's walk from the village, and that she must look after her house and her children in the intervals of toiling under a blazing sun, it is not hard to understand why the infantile mortality is so high. And yet the instinct of the Spaniard to have a definite interest of his own, however small, is always in evidence. In parts of Spain where the poor man is landless, in such districts, for instance, as parts of Soria and the Batuecos, which are said to be as poverty-stricken as any corner of Europe, the Spaniard contrives to keep a pig and a few fowls, one and all as gaunt and hungry as himself. He must be hard pressed at times to provide the very meagre allowance necessary to keep them alive. But they serve to suggest to him a feeling of comparative independence, and he would deem himself an outcast if he had no live stock at all.
In Doquiera there are but three landlords who employ labour. The cacique is one, and of course the largest; longo intervallo, the grocer follows; the last of the men of means and mark is the forastero, a stranger who recently started a small huerta, and has had the amazing presumption to import new-fangled agricultural implements all the way from Barcelona-implements that no priest has ever blessed, presumably because they were invented by the devil.
To make matters worse, and still further to show his indifference to honourable and established custom, the forastero bottles his wine though everybody in Doquiera knows that wine in bottles is never worth drinking. Even the cacique and the grocer would not venture upon the modern road that the forastero, who comes from across the plains, travels over so gaily, and one regrets to add so profitably. Small wonder if when some of Doquiera's most pious women-folk pass the forastero on the plaza, they avert their heads and make the sign of the cross, suspecting that he is no better than an atheist.
Let us pay a visit to the huerta of one of Doquiera's husbandmen; a tall, lean, sunburnt man, extremely shabby, prematurely aged by toil but very well contented with his lot in life. Perhaps as the result of his labours on some acre and a half of land he earns the equivalent of two pounds a month, perhaps twenty-five pounds a year. Of this modest sum not more than six pounds will be in cash, derived from the sale of some five or six pigskins of wine, sold in March or April before the tax-collector makes his annual call. The trifle that the tax-collector leaves behind him will go to buy the family clothes and such groceries as cannot be secured through the medium of the system of barter that will be presently explained.
Our friend, known in Doquiera as Tio Paco, though his baptismal name is Francisco Jose Sanchez y Perez, divides his huerta into several parts. There is the small vegetable garden in which he raises potatoes, beans, peas, onions, garlic, lettuces, and cucumbers, all of which require careful and constant watering. On a patch apart he grows the garbanzos which have learnt to thrive on a dry soil.
Beyond this vegetable garden (around which a few fruit-trees are scattered) we come to a small olivar or olive orchard containing a score of gnarled veterans whose produce in a good year is quite remarkable. The age of the trees would suggest that they were supplying Doquiera with olives in the far-off days when Christopher Columbus was explaining his hopes, in vain, to Ferdinand and Isabella, and doubtless it is only antiquity that has robbed the fruit of most of its quality. When the fruit is ripe Tio Paco takes it to a friend who has an olive press, and in payment of his friend's services leaves an agreed measure of the oil behind. The olives from which the oil has been extracted are given to the pig, and any surplus goes on to the land as manure.
If Tio Paco should grow wheat under his olive-trees, he takes the harvest to the miller who grinds it for him on similar terms to those exacted by the owner of the oil press, and the flour then goes to the baker who keeps back a certain proportion in return for his task of turning the bulk into loaves. It will be seen that money does not often change hands in Doquiera.
Beyond the olivar is the vina (vineyard) looking of course to the south. The vines are very old, and straggle over the ground in fashion that would shock a Frenchman from the Midi, but it must be remembered that the dreaded phylloxera has never acquired a strong foothold in Spain, and although the opinion is fairly general both in France and Germany that the Spaniard entrusts his vineyards to Providence, the belief is not altogether well founded, or it is at least founded upon incomplete knowledge. To be sure, the cura blesses Tio Paco's vineyard every year, and for anything the writer knows to the contrary, this blessing may avail to keep the phylloxera away. But our friend is aware that if he wishes to handle one hundred and fifty pesetas and face the tax-gatherer with confidence, he must leave nothing to luck or even to the good services of the cura.
All through the day at critical seasons of the year he labours among his vines, and if he cannot treat them in strictly modern fashion or give them the chemical dressing so necessary in Germany and France, the wine is no worse on this account. In the last-named countries the ravages of the phylloxera have weakened the vines to such an extent that these dressings are absolutely necessary.
Tio Paco has both red and white grapes in his vineyard, the former supremely sour, the latter delightfully sweet. When vintage approaches Tio Paco's neighbours come to his assistance and he goes to theirs. Each man knows that it would be impossible to harvest the grapes unaided, and although our friend has been the father of twelve children only five survive, and of these only one (Paquito) is old enough to help in the fields. Sometimes Tio Paco hires a little assistance, and two or three women may be seen labouring in his vina. But no money changes hands: he pays for their services with some corn or wine or oil which will serve perhaps to replenish the store of a family that can only hope to face the winter with the aid of occasions like these.
If you go very carefully through our friend's huerta, you will find in some unfrequented corner one or two tobacco plants whose white flowers are obliging enough to lose the greater part of their insistence under the blaze of light that falls upon them. It may be doubted whether in any year Tio Paco can collect as much as a quarter of a pound of tobacco from this secret storehouse. He knows too that if one of the guarda montes were to see the tobacco plants there would be trouble, associated with a considerable fine if not with imprisonment. But Tio Paco is a sportsman and a sufficiently good Spaniard to hate the Government. So the tobacco plants persist, and year after year the worthy man smokes a few cigarettes of his own making, or even gives a small handful to the guarda monte who, being a civil man, not averse from the good things of life, accepts it with a smile that speaks volumes.
We must turn aside for a moment to say a few kindly words about Tio Paco's friend, the guarda monte, and explain why he happens to exist. Beyond the area of the cultivated land the country belongs to the Government. On the mountain-sides clad with oak and pine up to the point at which the ilex-trees begin, there is plenty of valuable timber, and there are partridges and rabbits. The last named may be shot in due season by those who have a licence, and it is the guarda monte's business, in theory at least, to see that the close season is observed and that every sportsman has taken out a licence. The guarda must also see that trees are not cut down, and his task is the more responsible one because the village folk are so careless.
They have quite a bad memory for close seasons; they really have no money to pay for licences. Then again there are times when they are short of fuel and are apt to forget that some useful tree within easy distance of the huerta is Government property. On other occasions there will be a great demand for fish, and somebody may have a little bit of explosive that will save all need for a long trial of the angler's skill. It is not difficult to see that the contingencies likely to arise provide ample occupation for the two guarda montes attached to the district who really work very hard for their very small pay.
Spain is essentially a land of concessions. The guarda montes must justify their existence but have no occasion to be too brutal in the exercise of their office. They must be diplomatic too, else how are they to deal with their old friend the cura, who was never known to purchase a game licence but who never goes walking without his gunstick and does not take count of the season when his good ama tells him that the pot is crying aloud for a partridge or a rabbit. The guarda monte cannot take official cognizance of any irregularities, but he may drop a friendly word to the cura to say that on the morrow, or the day following, his duties will take him in a certain direction, and the cura is quick enough to gather that it is quite safe to go in another. In the same way the guarda monte would not tolerate the existence of a tobacco plantation on any huerta, but if a man likes to grow two or three modest tobacco plants in some retired spot, the guarda monte will make a few cigarettes out of part of the produce, and console himself, if consolation be necessary, with the pleasant thought that it will be all the same a hundred years hence.
Many of the guarda montes in remote Spanish villages, of which Doquiera is a tithe, are friends of the poor. They have intimate knowledge of the bitterness of the struggle for life, and if a hungry man should help himself to a rabbit or partridge out of season and without a licence, it is more than likely that nothing will be said unless the words take the form of a hint to be more careful in future. If, on the other hand, men who have no excuse for poverty raid the Government lands, the guarda monte will prove a very tough customer. For he carries a carbine, has the right to use it at discretion, and finds the weight of a weapon that is seldom used very trying to his arm and his patience. It must not be imagined that the authorities in Madrid are altogether in ignorance of the conditions prevailing on the countryside, or that they would alter them very materially if they could. To live and let live is the Government policy in dealing with the village folk who endure poverty so cheerfully and give little or no trouble to the authorities. If they were political agitators their lot in life would be altogether harder.
Returning to Tio Paco's huerta for a last look round, we shall find that he has a small plantation of well-tended fig-trees which yield an abundance of fine fruit in due season. By the time the figs are fully ripe, the pigs that have been allowed to roam at will over the mountain-side, where the goats are also grazing, are being brought in for fattening against the great day of Todos los Santos, and the ravages of dysentery and infantile cholera are checked to some very small extent by the practice of giving the bulk of the unsound fruit to the pigs. The rest of his harvest is dried by Tio Paco who disposes of the store to the grocer in exchange for sugar, chocolate and salt, and the grocer in his turn packs the figs carefully to send them to some big city where they will command a ready sale.
It will be seen that with the exception of the wine no part of Tio Paco's produce is paid for in cash, and it may be in a very good year Tio Paco will barter one tinaja of wine in the village, and by so doing both parties to the bargain will avoid the consumo, which is only levied on goods bought and sold in the ordinary way of business. There is little occasion to wonder that Tio Paco, for all his hard work and relative prosperity, never becomes a rich man. Year in, year out he labours, but it must be a prosperous year indeed in which he can carry fifty pesetas to the grocer for investment against the night that comes wherein no man may work. He tells you over a cigarette and a copa de aguardiente how he has worked his land for four and twenty years, and he confesses that he is well satisfied with the result of his labours. Doquiera regards him as one of the prosperous, speaks of him as though he were a capitalist, and yet it is unlikely that out of the produce of nearly a quarter century of labour Tio Paco has saved as much as twenty pounds. Happily for Doquiera this is wealth. Not many a Spanish village of such dimensions can boast a labourer who has put by as much, and this small fortune has only been amassed by dint of hard labour all day and nearly every day throughout the year.
Night comes in fascinating guise to Doquiera which knows little light save that of oil lamps and stars. The village is not given to dissipation, the hours spent in the fields are too long and too arduous, the hour of rising too small and the cost of oil too large. The crudest of crude olive oil, the kind of thing that Tio Paco extracts from his time-worn olivar, serves to feed the lamps which shine fitfully from the huts of the labourers, and the reek of the oil does not add to the attraction of the living-room. The cafe and the taberna boast nothing better than smoky lights, and this religious dimness may account for the fact that patrons leave so soon.
Even at the less busy season of the year, when all Doquiera has gone to bed, the sereno keeps watch and ward over the guiltless streets. He is a very old man and carries a horn lantern in one hand and a spear in the other. An agile lad of fourteen could deprive him of both, but in all the years of his ill-paid duty he can recall no exciting moment, save when a volume of smoke issuing from the taberna warned him that something had caught fire. For many months afterwards his promptitude was acknowledged in copitas de aguardiente, and since that time Doquiera has slept peacefully, conscious that no evil can approach its dwellings.
The peaceful sleeping can only be acquired with some difficulty and patience by the visitors of Doquiera, because it is part of the sereno's duty to record the passing of the night and take upon himself the labours of the meteorological office. It is also seemly for him to start the recitals with which he shatters the silence of the night-hour by an invocation to the Virgin. Ave Maria Santesima._ Las doce son, y serena_. The cry lingers in our ears long after time and place have combined to remove it and brings Spain back as surely as the call of the flower-sellers or the scent of the market-place, or the sight of the road to the Plaza de Toros on a Sunday afternoon. These return to us in the mirage of dreams and wake us with a sense of regret to the truth that we are not in Spain. In all Doquiera nothing emphasizes the old-world life and mood so definitely as the sereno's cry.
There is one other cry, almost as old-fashioned as the sereno's, far less agreeable to hear, and having its origin in some forgotten century. This is a cry in which all the youth of the village join eagerly when it is announced that some widow, instead of resting content with the memory of the beloved departed, has decided to take to herself a second husband. Doquiera would not excite itself if one of its few widowers were to take the risk of a second wife, but when the proprietress of the estanco decided not so very long ago to change her state (gossips said she did no more than regulate it), Doquiera was wildly excited.
The good widow gave up a comfortable little position to marry her querido-none other than the forastero to whose farm reference was made on an earlier page. She was quite popular in the village, but the whole sentiment of rural Spain is opposed to the marriage of widows, perhaps because men, being in a minority, the number of spinsters must be thereby increased. On the night when Doña Dolores was re-wedded, Doquiera's youth armed with tin cans, kettles, whistles, and every noise-producing instrument they could think of, serenaded the forastero's farm a little way beyond the village, and shouted extremely ribald verses taught by the local rhyme-maker and sung to a jota.
All this procedure associated with the cencerrada is strictly sin malicia, i.e. harmless, and though the forastero and the buxom lady of his choice were doubtless considerably disturbed and not a little vexed, they were wise enough to take no offence at the interruption. In fact, before the score or more of village roysterers had sung their indecent rhymes half a dozen times over, the forastero's head-man Pablo made his way from the kitchen with a big pitcher of wine which was handed round to the serenaders and the guardia civil who had accompanied them in the interests of law and order. The little timely gift changed the whole mood of the company; the offensive verses were dropped, the jota resumed its proper words, the only shouts were those of olé (bravo!), and the small company straggled back under the stars to mud huts and well-earned repose.
Another form of serenade practised in Doquiera, and of course in every Spanish village, is the Christmas carol. For a few nights before Christmas little children go from house to house singing to the tune of some familiar jota lines associated with the Story of the Nativity. He must be poor indeed who cannot spare a trifle for these young serenaders, and though money is very scarce in Doquiera, sweets and fruit are always given, and the babies, to whom such luxuries come rarely, look forward throughout the year to the nights when their simple songs will be welcomed by those who in some respects are childlike as themselves. Kindness to children in Spain is as universal as cruelty to animals.
We must be leaving Doquiera soon now, but before following the road elsewhere it is only right to mention the great rural procession of the year, taken at the time of the feria, to bring to Doquiera the effigy of the local virgin, "la de la Sangre," from her resting-place in the old convent that stands five miles away on a spur of the sierra. To bring the saint to the church all Doquiera tacasion is almost a picnic: the men carry their bota, the women's baskets are filled with tortillas and fruit. All work on the huerta is suspended, and Doquiera seems to be left in charge of the few decrepit old folk who are unfit to take the journey.
In his heart of hearts it may be that Doquiera's santo padre feels that his fourteen stone of weight distributed over a height of five feet five inches was never intended for a ten-mile journey, but he makes the best of it, and tramps along happily, like Falstaff of old, "larding the lean earth as he walks along." When he reaches the last huerta on the path that of his affluent friend the forastero, he asks for a mule; it is his annual request and is always granted, and for the rest of the day his fatigue is forgotten. He has been seen on the way back, when the mule has been restored to its master, moving rather unsteadily before the effigy of the Virgin, but it will be remembered that King David himself danced before the ark, and it may be that the padre cura does no more than seek to imitate the historic example. Let us remember too that the day has been hot and the journey long, and that every bota has been offered to the santo padre whose thirst is inexhaustible. After all it is an annual holiday, and if the worthy little man needs a friendly arm or two to help him up the hill leading into Doquiera, there is no lack of aid, and men say with satisfaction that their cura is human like themselves and consequently liable to err.
The procession is always attended by the guardia civil, and though the effigy is carried by men, it is the women whose state of ecstasy is remarkable. The most of them are united in a sisterhood that works during the year to make a new and splendid cloak for the Virgen de la Sangre. Doña Serafina, from the casa senorial, is the moving spirit of this sisterhood; all her wasted womanhood seems to be stimulated by the occasion, and she turns an indulgent eye upon the accompanying spirit of revelry in which she takes no part.
Although the whole journey does not cover more than ten miles, evening has arrived before the last stragglers join the procession outside the village and the effigy reaches the Plaza de la Constitucion to an accompaniment of lanterns and torches, past the pig-strewn, malodorous alleys and little by-ways in which late fowls and inquisitive goats manage to get in everybody's way, though perhaps the fault is not altogether theirs. With all befitting solemnity the effigy is carried to the front of the high altar. Doquiera's best candles are lighted to do honour to the occasion, and the effigy rests in peace until the following morning brings the hour of the official procession.
For nine days following the state procession a service is held in her honour every afternoon and then she is carried back again to her convent. No universal holiday marks the return journey. The men of Doquiera remember that they must work for the right to live, and they leave to their women-folk the honour of accompanying their santo padre and the guardia civil.
Bensusa, Samuel Levy. Home Life in Spain. MacMillan, 1910.
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