Spain. Wentworth Webster
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Spain
PREFACE
THERE is a difficulty in writing a book of this character on Spain, which does not exist, we think, to the same extent with any other European country. In most European nations the official returns and government reports may be accepted as trustworthy, and the compiler has little more to do than to copy them; but in Spain this is far from being always the case. In some instances, from nonchalance and habitual inexactitude, in others, and especially in all matters of finance and taxation, from designed misstatement, all such reports have to be received with caution and scrupulously examined. The reader must remember also that in Spain smuggling and contraband dealing in various forms is carried on to such a vast extent as seriously to vitiate all trade returns. Thus it is that Spanish statistics can be considered only as approximate truths.
Another difficulty arises from the very varied character of the Spanish provinces. Hardly any statement can be made of one province which is not untrue of another. The ordinary descriptions of Spain present only one, or at most two, types, the Castling and Andalusian, and utterly neglect all the rest. The provinces of Spain have been well described as divided into "five Irelands" whose habits and modes of thought, political aspirations, and commercial interests and aptitudes, are often utterly opposed to those of the capital. A brief survey of the whole of Spain is attempted in the following pages.
In a work of this kind one other obvious difficulty is to know what to omit. Some well-worn topics will be found to be absent from these pages. No references are made to the great Peninsular War. This can be easily studied in the admirable pages of Sir W. Napier in English, and of Toreno in Spanish, or in compendiums of these, which again are filtered down in every guide-book. For a like reason Prescott's brilliant works are not alluded to.
For the chapter on Geology and Mining the reader is indebted to one of the most distinguished Associates of the School of Mines, who has been recently engaged in practical geological survey and mapping in Spain.
Much also of the present work is due to private information most kindly furnished by Spanish friends of high position in the literary and political world, and with whom some of the subjects treated have been frequently discussed. To these the author offers his warmest and most grateful thanks.
CHAPTER I.
THE GEOGRAPHY OF SPAIN
SPAIN, with the neighbouring kingdom of Portugal, constitutes the most westerly of the three southern peninsulas of Europe, and in Cape Tarifa, latitude 36° 1', it attains the most southerly point of the whole continent. Separated from France and from the rest of Europe by the chain of the Pyrenees, and surrounded on all other sides by either the Mediterranean or the Atlantic, it presents at first sight the appearance of an exceedingly compact and homogeneous surface. It seems strange that this well-defined peninsula should contain two separate kingdoms, with peoples who speak languages allied, yet so distinct as to be mutually unintelligible to the uneducated classes.
The peninsula lies between latitude 43° 45' and 36° 1' N., and between 3° 20' E. and 9° 32' W. longitude. In shape it is thus nearly a square; a diagonal line from the N.E. Cape Creuz to the S.W. Cape St. Vincent measures 650 miles, while from Cape Ortegal, N.W., to Cape Gata, S.E., would be 525 miles. The whole area of the peninsula contains 219,200 square miles, of which 36,500 on the west belong to Portugal, and 182,700 to Spain.
The peninsular form of the country would lead us to expect that it would partake of all the characteristics of a maritime climate; but such is not the case. From the comparative evenness of the coast-line, unbroken and unindented by any deep inlets except on the extreme north-west, in Galicia, the coast-line bears a less proportion to the whole surface than that of many lands less surrounded by the sea. It counts only 1300 miles, 700 of which are washed by the Mediterranean, and 600 by the Atlantic; that is, 1 mile of coast-line to 134 square miles of area; while Italy contains 1 to 75, and Greece 1 to 7. From the configuration of the coast, and from the character of the great central plateau, a large part of Spain has really an extreme continental climate.
For while it is distinctly separated from the rest of Europe by the line of the Pyrenees, Spain is no less distinctly divided into different districts in the interior—districts which differ most widely in climate and elevation and products. Six of these are usually named: (1) The N.W. Atlantic coast, comprising Galicia, the coast of which presents a continuation of the Fiord system of Norway, and of the Firths of Scotland and Ireland; (2), the northern slope of the Cantabrian Mountains, and the narrow slip of land contained between them and the Bay of Biscay, comprising the Asturias, Santander, and the Basque Provinces; (3) the Valley of the Ebro, with Navarre, Aragon, and Catalonia; (4) the great Central Plateau—Leon, Old and New Castile, Estremadura, and La Mancha; (5) the Mediterranean Provinces, including Valencia, Murcia, and the parts of Andalusia between the Sierra Nevada and the Mediterranean; (6) the rest of Andalusia sloping towards the Atlantic.
We will treat of these in order.
Mountain Chains
But first we must speak of the various mountain systems and river basins of Spain, without which it is impossible to understand either the physical conditions of the country, or the social and political state of the various populations which has resulted from them.
First, on the north is the chain of the Pyrenees, a continuation of the great Alpine system of Central Europe, stretching from Cape Creuz, 3° 19' E., to the Bay of Biscay, 2° 12' W., a distance of 320 miles, and prolonging itself westward in lower chains of different denominations until it finally sinks into the Atlantic at Cape Finisterre. The culminating points of the Pyrenees are towards the centre of the chain, in Mounts Maladetta, 11,150 feet, and the Pic de Posets and the Mount Perdu, each about 11,000 feet, whence the heights gradually descend, on the east to the Mediterranean and on the west to the Bay of Biscay. With the exception of the little Bidassoa, which in the lower part of its course forms the boundary between France and Spain, at the bottom of the Bay of Biscay, all the other waters of the Spanish side of the Pyrenees belong to the Ebro and to the Mediterranean. Parallel to the coast of the Bay of Biscay the Pyrenees are prolonged, first, by the Cantabrian Mountains, which run through the Basque Provinces, and the Province of Santandar; thence by the Picos de Europa, 8300 feet—from the south-eastern spurs of which the Ebro and Pisuerga take their rise—and the Asturian Mountains, to the Sierra de Penamarella, at the junction of the three Provinces of Leon, Asturias, and Galicia. The chain here attains its greatest elevation, 9450 (?) feet, then descends to a plateau of about 4000 feet, whence it sinks rapidly to the Atlantic, forming the headlands of Ortegal, the extreme north-western, and of Finisterre, the extreme western, point of Northern Spain. The mountains of Leon form the western watershed, between the waters of the Ebro and those which fall into the Atlantic. The line is continued eastward by the Oca Mountains, the Sierra de Moncayo, and the Idubeda Mountains. These mountain chains divide the basin of the Ebro from that of the Douro. They also form the northern buttress of the great plateau of Central Spain, which attains an elevation of from 2000 to 4000 feet. The rise to the plateau from the Bay of Biscay is very abrupt. Within fifty miles of leaving the coast the railways from the north attain a height of 2000 feet, and reach the Central Plateau, at Quintanapalla, at an elevation of 3000 feet; while La Cañada, the highest point on the line to Madrid, is nearly 4460 feet, or about sixty feet higher than the tunnel of the Mount Cenis. From the eastern side the rise is less abrupt, and the plateau is entered at the lower elevation of 2330 feet, on the line from Alicante to Madrid. The famous Pass of Somosierra, on the old northern coach-road from Madrid, is about 4700 feet above the level of the sea. From these figures it is easy to perceive how very different is the aspect of these buttress chains when seen from the plateau, and when looked at from the plain from which they rise. Thus the Sierra de Moncayo, 7700 feet, stands out with boldness from the Valley of the Ebro, but viewed from the plateau of Castile it is scarcely noticeable. From its summit, however, the finest view of the whole range of the Pyrenees to be found anywhere on the Spanish side of the chain, is to be obtained.
Turning thence towards the south and south-east, these mountain chains—under the various names of the Sierras de Cuenca, de Molina, and Albarracin—divide the river basins of the Mediterranean from the far larger ones of the Atlantic. They have their culminating point in the Muela de San Juan and the Cerro