Gibraltar itself, as a town, is said to be ‘stuffy and sea-coaly, the houses wooden and druggeted, and built on the Liverpool pattern, under a tropical climate; but transport an Englishman where you will, and like a snail, he takes his house and his habits with him. The traveller who lands by the steamer will be tormented by cads and touters, who clamorously canvass him to put up at their respective inns. They are second-rate and dear. At Griffith’s hotel is one Messias, a Jew (called Rafael in Spain), who is a capital guide both here and throughout Andalucia. The other posadas are mere punch and pot-houses, nor is the cookery or company firstrate, but the hospitality of the Rock is unbounded, and, perhaps, the endless dinnerings is the greatest change from the hungry and thirsty Spain. As there are generally five regiments in garrison, the messes are on a grand scale; more roast beef is eaten and sherry drunk than in the whole of Spain: but there is death in the pot, and the faces of “yours and ours” glow redder than their jackets; a tendency to fever and inflammation is induced by carrying the domestics and gastronomies of cool damp England to this arid and torrid “Rock”.’
We are told that no one should omit to cross the Straits and set foot on African soil. ‘The contrast is more striking than even passing from Dover to Calais.’ At Tangiers one can put up at the house of a Scottish woman, ‘or at Joanna Correa’s; one Ben Elia also takes in travellers, for he is a Jew … obtain a soldier as an escort, and ride in twelve hours to Tetuan; lodge in the Jewish quarter. The daughters of Israel, both of Tetuan and Tangiers, are unequalled in beauty: observe their eyes, feet, and costume; they are true Rebeccas.’
Moving further up the coast of the Spanish peninsula, Ford has little good to say about the people. ‘The Valencians are perfidious, vindictive, sullen, and mistrustful, fickle, and treacherous. Theirs is a sort of tigre śinge character, of cruelty allied with frivolity; so blithe, so smooth, so gay, yet empty of all good; nor can their pleasantry be trusted, for, like the Devil’s good humour, it depends on their being pleased; at the least rub, they pass like the laughing hyena, into a snarl and bite: nowhere is assassination more common; they smile, and murder while they smile.’
As for their physical appearance: ‘… they are as dusky as Moors, and have the peculiar look in their eyes of half cunning, half ferocity of the Berbers. The burning sun not only tans their complexions, but excites their nervous system; hence they are highly irritable, imaginative, superstitious, and mariolatrous; their great joys and relaxations are religious shows.’
Perhaps some of this can be put down to their work in the surrounding rice-fields where ‘the sallow amphibious cultivator wrestles with fever amid an Egyptian plague of moskitos, for man appears to have been created here solely for their subsistence. The mortality in these swamps is frightful; few labourers reach the age of 60. The women are seldom prolific, but the gap is filled up by Murcians and Arrogonese, who exchange life for gold, as there is a fascination in this lucrative but fatal employment; so closely and mysteriously do the elements of production and destruction, plenty and pestilence, life and death, tread on the heels of each other.’
The Catalans are said to be discourteous and inhospitable to foreigners, ‘whom they fear and hate. They were neither French nor Spanish, but sui generis both in language, costume, and habits; indeed the rudeness, activity, and manufacturing industry of the districts near Barcelona, are enough to warn the traveller that he is no longer in high-bred, indolent Spain.’
Nevertheless, when you get to know them, ‘they are true, honest, honourable, and rough diamonds … Catalonians, powerfully constituted physically, are strong, sinewy, and active, patient under fatigue and privation, brave, daring, and obstinate, preferring to die rather than to yield. They form the raw material of excellent soldiers and sailors, and have always, when well commanded, proved their valour and intelligence on sea and land.’ Ford’s handbook is often as much a guide to himself as to Spain, and later guides, as we shall see, discontinued this prejudicial if not prejudiced analysis of the Spanish provincial character, apart from a few general and unexceptionable remarks which left the traveller to find things out for himself.
In the edition of 1892, still said to have been written by Ford though it was thirty-four years after his death (though ‘revised and corrected’), the above comments on the Catalans had been much reduced, while the strictures against the Valencians had disappeared altogether.
In the half-century after Ford’s day twelve thousand kilometres of railways were built or put under construction, ‘principally by means of French capital, and at enormous cost. They are, perhaps, the worst constructed and worst managed lines in the world, but they keep excellent time. Every train is bound to carry a first-class nonsmoking compartment, but the privilege is not commonly enjoyed without hard fighting, unless the non-smoker has already taken possession at the starting-point of the train. Railway guards, and indeed all officials except the very lowest, invariably travel first-class, and sometimes occupy nearly half the available seats in the carriages. Luggage robberies on railways are not uncommon; it is therefore better not to put valuables into the trunks which go in the van.’
In 1892 the most convenient way to Spain was still by boat to Gilbraltar or Cádiz, though a year or two later Baedeker could tell us that the ‘quickest connection is, of course, by railway via Paris’. Regarding the time necessary to see Spain, Murray now informs us that a complete tour may be made in five months ‘by those to whom time is an important consideration’.
A. & C. Black’s guidebook for 1892 considers three months to be enough, remarking in the preface that: ‘The improvements affected in the country during the last decade, in the directions of travelling facilities, hotel, police, and sanitary arrangements, are hardly credible. The hotels in the principal cities are now equal to those of any other country; while the complete network of well-appointed lines of railway enables the traveller to visit the finest and most interesting localities in a short space of time, with comfort and with safety.’
Passports had been abolished in 1862, though foreigners were still liable ‘to be called upon by local Spanish authorities to declare their nationality, and object of their journey’. After assuring us of the efficiency of the post office, Black’s says, ‘Letters are never opened save during exceptional pronunciamiento moments and electioneering time. It is also a mistake to put “Esquire” after the name when receiving letters poste restante, because the Spanish clerk who searches for the letter in the rack will think that is your surname.’
Regarding toilet facilities on the trains and at stations Murray says that some are very poor, and others ‘often mere hovels. The extreme filthiness of every place to which railway servants and passengers of every class have access in common is much to be deplored.’ Even in 1913 Baedeker said that railway stations inside Spain were still ‘very primitive. The waiting-rooms are generally closed, or unusable, or altogether lacking. Refreshment rooms are rare and poor. It is advisable, therefore, to be provided with food and wine for consumption in the railway carriage.’