Spain, Civil War

In the swift rush of daily news, more is said of military leaders and their campaigns, of statesmen and changing governments, than of the deep social and economic transformations behind the news, or the character of this land and its people.

Long before King Alfonso fled, these changes were of course under way, and because of them his monarchy failed.

Since 1922, when I first went to Spain to live, these transitions have gathered momentum, until today this once romantic land of duennas, monasteries, bullfights, and leisurely pastoral life has written a new and dramatic chapter in its long history.

Where centuries-old country lanes and mountain trails used to wind, fine new concrete roads now streak over the hills. To a large degree, men have exchanged their saddle mules for flivvers, and the high-wheeled, clumsy oxcart yields to the whizzing motor truck.

From the Bay of Biscay down to the blue Mediterranean, traditional peasant costumes are being discarded and men are dressing in plain blue overalls. Black-eyed senoritas today lay away the time-honored mantilla, get their hair bobbed, and hunt city jobs as typists, telephone girls, and shop clerks, as do their sisters in many lands.

New thinking as well as new machines change the way of Spanish life. Bullfighting still goes on, but now the intrepid toreadors belong to a labor union! You may still find guitars and fandangos, for Spaniards are ever a music-loving people, and possibly you may find here and there a lovesick couple mooning at each other through an old iron-barred window. More and more, however, the radio supersedes the guitar and the girl has come out from behind the historic grillwork and gone to the movies with her sweetheart-or to the street barricades to fight with him.

One fact to grasp, in understanding the social muddle here, is that Spain is divided into 50 provinces; and not so many years ago it was commonly said that it also had 50 different national dances and costumes, together with almost as many dialects.

Here is an incident full of light: With some Catalan friends I was going through one of Barcelona's big textile mills -whose 60,000 looms turn Dixie cotton into cloth for all Spain-when some one suggested a further trip next day.

"But I can't go," said a Barcelona companion. "Tomorrow I must go abroad to Madrid!"

Such strong ties with home locality, rather than any intense national adherence, are typical of Spanish provincialism.

Comparatively sudden advent of new high-speed roads, faster vehicles, speeches and news broadcast by air, and the breakdown of church influence, all combine now to dissipate this old conservative provincial spirit. Thus has Spain been turned into a milling, restless land. For the first time country and town life are freely blended, and the peasant can hear the exciting talk…"