Travel
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Iberia, Land of the Sun
.Ningun sdbado sin son, the Spaniards say—I translate freely —" not a week-end passes without sunshine." To those fortunates who can be off on the wings of the morning I say go at once to that sun-blest peninsular, go and refresh your jaded selves in the only country in Europe where rest and the soul's peace are still possible.
Oh, I know the Spaniards have recently carried through a revolution, which was incidentally an object-lesson in democracy. There are still many beams to adjust, I admit, in the Republican roof. And in Portugal, you will tell me from your newspaper, revolution is still in the air. But I can assure you, from my own knowledge and from the testimony of every English resident in the peninsula, no visitor so much as suffers inconvenience, let alone danger.
Where to go ? Well, in the autumn it is all beautiful. You may take your choice. The sun you will always have ; the sense of contact with a really civilized people too. But if you are a student of architecture you will want to visit the north. Leon, Burgos, Oviedo—Spanish Gothic and Romanesque with a character all its own, and you will take ship to Vigo from Southampton. If you are a student of history you will probably make straight for the old Arab kingdoms—Granada, Cordoba and their fabled charms—by way of Gibraltar : or you feel more at home in a soft, dreamy atmosphere you will take ship to Lisbon and make for Cintra or Coimbra.
Unless you have unlimited leisure, you cannot hope to see and enjoy Northern and Southern Spain in the same visit. If scenery and vegetation in a setting of mountain and sea be your Mecca, you have Mallorca, the largest and best known of the Balearic Isles. (You have, too, Iviza, but let Iviza keep her secrets.. They are for a favoured few.) It is not true that the British Government is proposing to Senor Alcela Zamora's Government an exchange : Mallorca for Gibraltar. But at least it is ben trovato, for your fellow country- men have discovered Mallorca by now, with a vengeance. That will be an attraction or a fatal drawback, according to temperament. But this I say, do not imagine that Palma, the capital, is Mallorca. The island has a variety of colouring, of settings and of flowers and fruit unsurpassed even in that luxuriant corner of Europe. The nearest approach to it you will find, not, strangely enough, on the Mediterranean coasts, but on the shores of the Atlantic in unknown Portugal.
For a quiet holiday among happy hardy folk you should seek out the bays and fishing villages of Catalonia.
Wherever you go you will be welcome. With courtliness and exquisite courtesy if .you remain a stranger and guest, with warm and delightful geniality if you can come out of your shell and manifest that precious quality of simpatia which is life to the Spanish soul. (The word is untranslatable, the quality unmistakable.) Make an effort to talk the language ; that is a safe tip. In itself the attempt is regarded as a token of friendliness. Then at once the Spaniard will temper his rare capacity for reserve with an expansiveness which is as a mirror of the sun's rays. Iberia is the sunny land, as much in the human as in the climatic sense. That is its special appeal to our jostling mechanical age.
I said that one has the feeling all the time of being in a civilized country—I was referring, of course, to the innate culture of the Spaniards, rich and poor—to their full-bodied humanity. But even if you interpret civilization in terms of machinery and modern travelling amenities, you will not be disappointed. Cast away your out-of-date Baedeker, go and see for yourself Madrid and her skyscrapers which, oddly enough, are not unpleasing ; Barcelona with her prodigious electricity supply and illumination to which this month's lighting of London cannot " hold a candle." The wonders of modern invention have merged quite naturally with mediaeval Spain. It is the country's peculiar charm. The trains you will find comfortable and punctual • hotels luxurious or unpretending but always clean. The food—ah, it is tasty enough and well cooked—but everywhere rich and, with only two large neals a day, apt to appear excessive.
You may take it from me, the best cure for anyone who is (and who is not?) suffering from the prevailing depression, is to cast care aside and try the sovereign remedy of Iberia, land of the sun.
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