Valencia and Murcia

Shut in between the barren range of the Sierra Molina on the north, and the arid plains of Murcia to the south, the ancient Kingdom of Valencia is one of the regions of Spain least visited by the tourist. And yet, a flowering and fruitful Eden, it lies beneath a burning sun, its waters trained in obedience to the hand of man. It puts forth a vegetation of tropical luxuriance. Demeter has blessed the land. Under the soft caressing winds that sweep up from the Mediterranean the soil yields four or five crops in the year to the industry of the peasant. And if at times the dreaded sirocco, charged with poisonous vapours from the Albufera, lays the country prostrate—well, for every Paradise was devised a snake!

The people of the province, with the exception of those of Orihuela, speak that variety of the Romance which I may call Catalan, and which, with local modification, is common all along the eastern coast of Spain from the mouth of the Segura to the frontier of Rousillon. Limousin, as it is sometimes called, is not a mere dialect, but a quite distinct language, a survival of the old Langue d’oc. Probably it was spoken by those Romanised Spaniards who were driven north of the Pyrenees by the Arabic invasion. It would be restored by them when they reconquered this portion of their old territory. The Christian population, before Valencia was recovered by Jaime el Conqueridor of Aragon, spoke Castilian or a tongue akin to it. But the Catalan of the new rulers was stronger, and soon swept aside the common speech of the people. Curiously enough, this same Catalan was not the language used in Aragon itself, a fact which no doubt had a strong determining influence in the choice of Castilian at the time of the unification of the two kingdoms. Why Orihuela alone clung to its old Castilian tongue in despite of the Conqueror is not clear, unless it was owing merely to the proximity of Murcia.

In character the Valencians are superstitious, revengeful, relentless in hate. “Ni olvido ni perdono” is their motto. They love the colour and joy of life. Dancing and love-making are their chief delights. And yet they are a laborious race. But their white, rather flabby appearance proclaims them lacking in backbone and initiative. “Flesh is grass, and grass is water. The men are women, the women—nothing!” says their own proverb.

The fertile huerta has found its novelist in Blasco Ibañez, a native of Valencia, who has beautifully described the languid life of the province. A translation must necessarily lack the force and elegance of the master’s style, but the following passages will at least enable the reader to picture a summer in the south:

“When the vast plain awakes in the bluish light of dawn, the last of the nightingales that have sung through the night breaks off abruptly in his final trill, as though he had been stricken by the steely shaft of day. Sparrows in whole coveys burst forth from the thatched roofs, and beneath this aerial rabble preening their wings the trees shake and nod.