Of the forthcoming pictures only one was in Class
I
,
The sound
, called in Spanish
of Music
Smiles and Tears. Return from the Ashes
,
with Samantha Eggar and Maximilian Schell, was condemned for
stressing ‘lust, adultery, illicit relations, crime and sadism.’ On
one church door I saw this condemnation of an especially bad
show: ‘This should be seen only by those ninety-four and above.’
One experience especially demonstrated the force of
Catholicism in Spain. I had taken a long walk out into the country
on a narrow road that led to Olivenza, and on the way back I
stopped to inspect a group of clean, good-looking buildings called
the Maternity Hospital of the Virgin of Solitude, and as I stood
at the gate a man came out whose wife had just been admitted
and we spoke of the good work such hospitals did.
‘Who runs them?’ I asked.
‘The Church. Who else?’
‘Are there any public hospitals?’
‘I don’t know what you mean. The Church gives us our
hospitals and schools. Don’t they give you hospitals and schools
in your country?’
‘We provide such things with taxation.’
He pondered this for some moments, then asked, ‘You mean
the government taxes you for what the Church gives us? You have
to pay for them out of your own pocket?’
I tried to explain that in many countries, England and Germany
for instance, taxes provided schools, but he interrupted, grabbing
me by the arm. “Tell me, would sensible men trust politicians to
run a hospital? The Church you can trust.’ He was unable to
imagine a society which operated on a system of taxation, and his
final question was, ‘You mean to say you allow politicians to teach
your children? The Church you can trust, but not those others.’
In Badajoz I also learned something about the government of
Spain. At the post office I purchased ten air-letter forms and paid
six pesetas (ten cents) each for them. I went back to the cathedral
plaza and spent most of one morning writing ten letters, a job I
find difficult, for words do not come easily to me. The next day
I took the ten letters to the post office to mail, but a clerk refused
them, saying, ‘The price of air-letter forms went up this morning
from six pesetas to ten.’
‘All right. Give me ten four-peseta stamps and I’ll stick them
on the letters.’
‘We can’t do that, sir, because it states very clearly on the form
that if anything whatever is enclosed in the form or added to it,
it will be sent by regular post.’
‘Then let me give you the difference, and you stamp them as
having ten pesetas.’
‘There’s no provision for that, sir.’
‘Then what can I do? Mail them as they are and let them go
regular mail?’
‘No, because they’re no longer legal. They’ve been declassified.’
‘It took me a long time to write these letters. How can I mail
them?’
‘Take each one. Place it inside an airmail envelope. Readdress
the envelope and place twelve pesetas’ worth of stamps in the
corner and mail it as a regular air-mail letter.’
This I did, and the letters were delivered in various countries,
but I was so astounded by the procedure that I called upon a high
government official to ask how such things could happen. His
answer was revealing. ‘The clerk did right. The forms you bought
were valid yesterday. Today they’re not. Each form states clearly
that nothing may be added, so there was no way to mail the old
forms.’
I pointed out that in half a dozen different countries, including
my own, I’d faced this problem and it had always been a simple
matter to paste on the additional postage, at which he said, ‘In
other countries, yes. But no nation in the world is so difficult to
govern as Spain. No people are so fundamentally anarchistic as
the Spanish. Therefore, when we say that nothing may be stuck
on the envelope we have got to mean it. If we fluctuated on this
point, we might be driven to fluctuate on others. The Spaniard
understands when the clerk stands fast. If the clerk once wavered,
he might be dead the next day.’
‘But it’s so unfair! You sell the forms one day and cancel them
the next, with no redress.’
‘My friend. The whole affair cost you what? Ten times six
pesetas. About one dollar American. That’s money lost, and it’s
too bad. But you will talk about this everywhere in Spain and
word will filter out to many people. And they’ll say, “See! Our
government means just what it says, even with foreigners.” Your
loss will do much good, my friend. Because we Spaniards are
devils to govern.’
That is why, throughout Spain one sees so many members of
the Guardia Civil, always in pairs, as I had seen them in Teruel.
No truth in Spain is more difficult for the traveler to ascertain
than that regarding these men, who are in effect the masters of
rural Spain and men of tremendous power in all society. I shall
recite seven stories for which I can personally vouch, having either
witnessed the incident or known the persons involved.
An American couple working at a United States Navy base
could not find quarters on the base but did find a comfortable
house in a nearby town. They had a thirteen-year-old daughter
who went to the local school. One Thursday the parents arranged
for her to be picked up by friends at the base and to stay with
them overnight. At five o’clock that afternoon two officers of the
Guardia Civil appeared, saying, ‘Señora, your daughter has not
passed our headquarters this day. Is there trouble?’ It is said that
every human being who lives in the Spanish countryside must be
personally known to the guardia, who are able to report on that
person’s movements, ideas and behavior.
An Englishman driving a small car of British make had a
breakdown on a lonely road out of Salamanca. A pair of guardia
walked by, ascertained his trouble, walked on to a telephone,
called their headquarters twenty miles away, directed the guardia
there to find at some garage a part for the British car, then walked
back to the Englishman and stayed with him until a passing truck
driver dropped off the part.
An Englishwoman staggered into an Extremaduran town with
a terrifying tale. She had been in a little village where a gang of
gypsies had molested her, trying to steal her purse. Two officers
came on the scene and began to rough the gypsies up, whereupon
the latter, fed up with previous pressure from the Guardia Civil,
cut their throats to the neckbone. Someone from the village ran
to report the murders to a neighboring Guardia station,
whereupon four pairs of guardia climbed into a truck, drove to
the scene of the murder, threw a cordon around the gypsy
encampment and proceeded to machine-gun every human being
therein.
The weekly bullfight at Sevilla was going badly and a riot
started. The local police who attend all bullfights tried to control
things, but the crowd laughed at them. The riot looked as if it
were going to get out of hand, so the squad of guardia who are
kept in reserve at all such functions started quietly down from
their seats high in the rafters. As they descended men began to
whisper, ‘The Guardia Civil.’ Slowly the guardia moved into the
arena, taking up positions facing the unruly mob. They drew their
revolvers and quietly looked at the rioters. There was not a man
in the mob who doubted that within the next minute the guardia
would begin to fire, and the riot collapsed.
An American working in a bar along the Mediterranean coast
got drunk and slugged a guardia. He was hauled off to a military
jail, where he was held incommunicado for six weeks, for the
guardia are under military rule and offenses against them are
judged by court-martial. Efforts of a most extraordinary kind
were made to gain the young man’s release, but to no avail. ‘We
can’t allow anyone to strike a member of the Guardia Civil,’ his
friends were told. ‘No one.’ Finally he was brought to secret trial
and sentenced to seven years in military prison. That was four
years ago. The night before I wrote this paragraph I was advised
by an American who knew the young man that word had been
quietly passed that he could have his freedom if he could scrape
together a fine of $7,000. Word of this affair traveled widely
among the hordes of young Europeans and Americans barging
into Spain in the summer: ‘No matter what you do, no matter
what happens, never touch a guardia.’
A New York woman, lost in the outskirts of Madrid at
midnight, was escorted to her hotel by two members of the
Guardia. When we asked her why she was in the Madrid
countryside at midnight, she explained, ‘In New York or Chicago
or San Francisco, I would be mortally afraid to go out alone after
dark. A woman simply isn’t safe in the United States after dark.
But in Spain, with the Guardia Civil on the job, I am safe to go
anywhere. No one is going to abuse me. So when I come to Spain
the thing I like to do most is to walk at night. Tonight I got lost.’
An intelligence officer of the United States Navy told me, ‘We
had this incident in which one of our kids in uniform committed
a major crime. No question about it. But we didn’t know whether
he’d had accomplices or not, so we put our best brains on the
job, and when we were through we checked with the Guardia
Civil and they’d done the same thing we were doing, but they had
a dossier on this kid that was unbelievable. They knew everything
he’d done for months past, who all his gang were, who was
involved. In the States I’ve cooperated with our F.B.I. on similar
cases, but in thoroughness they don’t compare with the Guardia.’
About such an organization opinions can vary. Conservatives
believe the Guardia to be the agency which permits Spain to exist
and that without these pairs of police Spain would fall apart in
anarchy. Liberals recall García Lorca’s harsh phrase, ‘those
patent-leather men with their patent-leather souls.’ At the
outbreak of Civil War in 1936 one of the first things that happened
in small villages across Spain was the slaughter of the Guardia
Civil, so in the ensuing war they fought on the side of General
Franco, revenging themselves for the outrages committed against
their brothers. I have heard many foreign travelers arguing that
the Guardia Civil was an invention of the Franco regime; actually
they are well over a century old, having been created in 1844 to
replace the militia, which had proved to be politically unreliable,
and since then, no matter what form of government has ruled
Spain, the guardia have been needed to keep order. In recent years
the Franco government, in an effort to popularize the Guardia,
has encouraged the press always to refer to them as La Benemérita
(the well-deserving) in much the same way that Manhattan police
are called ‘New York’s finest,’ and it is common to see stories in
which the brave Benemérita captured a bandit or the
compassionate Benemérita helped a widow. A Spaniard told me,
‘We Spaniards are really bastards to govern. If we didn’t have the
Guardia we’d have no country. And remember this. If the
Communists had won in 1939, every guardia you see today would
still be a guardia. Only he’d be a Communist guardia. For to rule
Spain without them would be impossible.’ He then used a phrase
I had not heard before: ‘We have the old spirit of Viva yo. In Spain
you must always take into account Viva yo.’
I must explain Viva yo because the phrase is essential, but before
I get to it I would like to introduce a few other words which I shall
be using frequently. When I was in college I mowed the lawn of
Professor J. Russell Smith, a Quaker geographer who wrote a
series of books about foreign lands. During the academic year
Professor Smith was usually absent, for he taught at Columbia
University, but in the summers he often spoke to me, and one
evening he mentioned some of the principles which governed his
work. I forget all of them but one: ‘James, if thee ever has cause
