Iberia (13 page)

the bull was ceremoniously slaughtered so that the hot blood of

 

the animal could run down over them, conferring invincibility

 

in battle. How many bulls must have been slain in the Mithraeum

 

of Mérida in those years when Spain was the manpower reservoir

 

for the empire!

 

Today, on the spot where these sacrifices occurred, other bulls

 

of that same breed are sacrificed for somewhat similar emotional

 

reasons: their mysterious power confers immortality on those

 

who fight them and on those who participate in the spectacle. I

 

did not see any bullfights in Mérida because prior to my departure

 

from home, Conrad Janis, son of the well-known New York art

 

dealer, had taken me aside and said, ‘The one thing you must see

 

when you get to Spain is this new matador Curro Romero. Hottest

 

thing to come along in many years. The greatest.’ He spoke with

 

a certain intensity. ‘Curro cites the bull from a distance, seems to

 

mesmerize him. Brings him forward very slowly, as if he were a

 

lap dog, then wraps the bull around him to form a magnificent

 

piece of sculpture. He’s enchanting—and remember his name.
Curro Romero. No matter how far you have to travel to see him,

 

take my word. He’ll be worth it.’

 

Young Janis was a hard-headed witness, not given to hyperbole,

 

and if he spoke so highly of a new matador, the man merited

 

attention, so I studied the posters that appeared in Mérida, but

 

unfortunately Romero was not scheduled to fight and I did not

 

see him performing at the Mithraeum, where bulls had been

 

worshiped two thousand years ago.

 

I was now ready for my second expedition. East of Mérida, in

 

a bleak landscape commanded by a low hill on which cowers a

 

crumbling castle, stands the miserable village of Medellín, a

 

collection of low houses strung along unpaved streets. In

 

midsummer the heat is unbearable and the dust as copious as the

 

flies. The church, whose thick old walls seem to be falling down,

 

is closed most of the time, and the main plaza is as empty and

 

unrewarding as any in Spain. Here is Extremadura at its most

 

unforgiving, yet this little town is a shrine to which a few devoted

 

travelers come each year from overseas to pay homage to one of

 

the molders of history: Hernán Cortés, conqueror of Mexico and

 

archetype of the conquistador. Born of poor parents and

 

foreseeing no opportunity in a village like Medellín, where life

 

was dominated by whatever family happened to occupy the castle

 

on the hill, Cortés struck out for the New World, where his harsh

 

Extremaduran training enabled him, with a bare handful of men

 

like himself, to conquer the Aztec empire and deliver it to Spain.

 

His achievement was heroic, for he brought not only the gold and

 

silver mines to the king but also a new race of people to the

 

Church.

 

In the weed-grown plaza of Medellín, above the spare white

 

houses with their tiny windows and red-tiled roofs, stands one

 

of Spain’s uglier statues. Cortés in bronze looks over the land he

 

deserted and he is brutal in his arrogance. His right leg is rigid

 

and pushed back, so that his hip is high, while his left leg is cocked

 

and resting on some vanquished object. His right arm, holding

 

the baton of authority, is drawn back, while the left holds the

 

unfurled flag of conquest. He wears an ornate helmet and his

 

heavily bearded face is grim with determination. Behind his legs
dangles the scabbard of a huge sword, and he might well be called

 

‘The Spirit of Extremadura.’

 

The heavy base is adorned by shields bearing the local spellings

 

of the names of those strange places where the emigrants from

 

this town gave their lives: ‘Méjico, Tebasco, Otumba, Tlascala.’

 

At the site of the cottage from which he left for conquest stands

 

the plaque: ‘Here stood the house where Hernán Cortés was born

 

in 1484.’ (Most scholars say 1485.) But one looks in vain for the

 

school established with the wealth he won, or the library, or the

 

hospital, or the university, or even the factory set up for personal

 

gain. The richness of Medellín, her men, was exported and nothing

 

came back. No nation in history ever won so much wealth for

 

itself in so short a time as did Spain in that half-century from

 

1520-1570, nor did any other nation ever retain so little for itself.

 

Gold came by the shipload from Mexico and Peru, paused briefly

 

in Spain and, having accomplished nothing, sped on to Italy and

 

the Low Countries. Again and again in mournful repetition this

 

will be the story of Extremadura, and when I see a defrauded

 

village like Medellín, I am appalled at the bad deal Spain accepted

 

in that crucial era. In fact, she ended up worse off than she had

 

been when it began, for all the bright young men who might have

 

developed Spain were gone. One might argue, I suppose, that the

 

social system in Spain was such that if an energetic man like Cortés

 

had stayed in Medellín he would have been submerged by the

 

reactionary force of the castle on the hill, and that in escaping to

 

Mexico he at least accomplished something. But whether that

 

argument is valid or not, the fact is that when he succeeded in

 

Mexico some of the fruits of his conquest should have filtered

 

back to his homeland, but that did not happen and today Medellín

 

stands as one of the most mournful places in Europe.
A brief explanation regarding historical and geographical names

 

in this book. It is not just to refer to Spaniards by their English

 

names. The Catholic Kings, whom we shall meet later, were not

 

Ferdinand and Isabella; the great emperor who will dominate the

 

next chapter was not Charles the Fifth; and the mighty and

 

complex man who married Queen Mary of England was not Philip

 

the Second. They were, respectively, Fernando and Isabel, Carlos
V and Felipe II. I once put this problem to a tertulia of savants,
whom we shall meet later in Madrid, and they, having faced the
problem in their own writings, proposed a sensible rule: ‘What
name would you have used when speaking to the man face to
face?’ The conquistador we know as Cortez was surely Cortés.
Therefore I shall use Spanish names, except in the case of Cristóbal
Colón; after all, he was an Italian who did not get to Spain until
1484, when he was in his lates thirties, so that Colón is as much
a perversion of his name as is Columbus. The same rule will
govern geographical names, which means Extremadura not
Estremadura; Sevilla not Seville; Zaragoza not Saragossa; and La
Coruña not Corunna; also, in Portugal, Lisboa and Porto.
However, in the case of adjectives derived from place names,
special problems arise. Strictly speaking, a man from Extremadura
is an extremeño, a man from Madrid a madrileño, a man from
Andalucía an andaluz, and one from the Basque Provinces a
vascongado, all, you will notice, without capital letters. Some of
these forms are so difficult to identify that I have preferred to use
standard English forms, which in the cases cited above are
Extremaduran, Andalusian and Basque; but in Spanish cultural
life the word madrileño carries with it such specific meanings that

 

I shall keep it, with a capital letter.

 

At Trujillo, farther north, I had the good luck to know Don

 

Ignacio Herguete García de Guadiana, grandson of a famous

 

doctor who had served the last two kings of Spain. Himself a

 

businessman in Madrid, his aunt lived in Trujillo, where she

 

occupied one of the noble houses fronting the main plaza. Don

 

Ignacio was a short man, handsome in appearance, and the most

 

rapid speaker I have ever known; he seemed a volcano of ideas

 

and I could understand why he had prospered in Madrid. He had

 

a countryman’s sense of humor and a deep appreciation of

 

Spanish history. He also had three beautiful daughters, each

 

destined to be taller than himself and representative of the young

 

people of Spain.

 

‘It’s the plaza that counts,’ he said as he finished showing me

 

his aunt’s house, with its tall ceilings and fifteenth-century

 

adornment. ‘Come out on the balcony and see the best small plaza
in Spain.’ We stood there for a long time as he pointed out the
features of this architectural gem, so beautiful and compact that
it ought to be preserved as a kind of museum. ‘Up there, as a solid
backdrop, the old castle. Marvelously preserved. You must
imagine it in 1470, when a famous gentleman of these parts,
Colonel Gonzalo Pizarro, used to prowl the streets of this town
on romantic forays. He sired a chain of illegitimate sons, the most
famous of which was Francisco, who left here to conquer Peru.
In the background you see a chain of fortress churches, each a
rough jewel rich in memories. Now look at how that side of the
plaza is composed entirely of flights of stairs interlocking at
different levels and at different angles. It’s like music in brick. We
used to block off the plaza and hold great bullfights, with people
sitting on the flights of stairs. The pillared arcades which line the
plaza are necessary in a place like Trujillo, because our noonday
heat can be pretty strong. I know other towns have arcades too,
but have you ever seen any that were more exactly suited to their
setting than ours? That large house over there with the huge iron
chain across the front? It dates back to the twelfth century and
belonged to a noble family who befriended the Emperor Carlos
Quinto, who stopped here on his way to marry Isabel of Portugal
in 1526. The chain indicates that Carlos granted immunity from
taxes to the owner. It belonged to the Orellana family, one of
whom discovered the Amazon. My cousin owns it now, but this
one over here is more famous. The big shield shows that it
belonged to the Pizarro family. Long after the conquest of Peru,
Pizarro’s descendants took the title Marqués de la Conquista and

 

that building was where they lived.

 

‘The statue on horseback? You’ll be interested in that. It’s

 

Pizarro in the uniform of a conquistador. It was sculpted by either

 

the wife or the daughter, I’ve never known which, of the famous

 

Spanish expert from New York, Archer M. Huntington.’
For some time Don Ignacio continued to point out the marvels

 

of this little plaza; there were seven or eight old homes with Ionic

 

pillars and severe ornament which were works of art, but I lost

 

my heart to a small building tucked away in a corner beyond the

 

Pizarro palace and now serving as the town hall. Its façade
consisted of three tiers of arches, each of the same width but
diminishing in height, so that the top ones were very wide and
flat, the middle wide and fairly flat and the bottom wide and
properly tall. The combination was unique and vivacious, and
during all the time I was in Trujillo I kept looking back to that
delightful building, one of the most charming things I saw in

 

Spain.

 

The castle of Trujillo consists of great cubes of masonry formed

 

into towers and long, blank walls. It is magnificently preserved

 

and bleakly empty. Throughout Spain we shall see many castles;

 

in fact, the nation has adopted as its tourist symbol the legendary

 

‘Castle in Spain,’ and there are many fine examples, but nowhere

 

one properly fitted out as it was in the fifteenth century. They are

 

always either empty, or being used for grain storage, or

 

redecorated into hotels, or perverted altogether, but nowhere can

 

one see a castle as a castle, and I think this regrettable. At Medina

 

del Campo, where Isabel the Catholic died, there is one which

 

could easily be restored, and at Almodóvar del Río, west of

 

Córdoba, one of the finest castles in the world, but it will be no

 

use to visit either. If I suffered any major disappointment in Spain,

 

it was that a country which had such great treasure in castles did

 

so little with them, for I believe that if one were properly restored,

 

travelers would come great distances to see it, as a reminder of

 

an age that has gone.

 

While sitting in the plaza one day I had an unexpected glimpse

 

of rural life. Earlier I had noticed a truck fitted out with seats

 

which seemed to contain an unusual number of passengers, but

 

I had thought no more about it. Now this same truck drew up to

 

the plaza and disgorged fourteen primly dressed rural people,

 

including a bride and groom. There was no jollity in the group,

 

although a wedding had apparently taken place and I supposed

 

that the celebrants were headed for some kind of banquet, but

 

they were very poor people, very poor indeed, and as they passed

 

I saw that the groom was a sunburned, stolid, square-faced peasant

 

of about forty and his bride a particularly ungainly spinster about