Poor Folk in Spain

We had tasted of Spain before ever we had crossed her frontiers. Indeed, perhaps Spain is the easiest country to obtain samples from without the fatigue of travelling. The Spaniard carries his atmosphere with him: wherever he goes he re-creates in his immediate surroundings more than a hint of his national existence. The Englishman abroad may be English—more brutally and uncompromisingly English than the Spaniard is Spanish—yet he does not carry England with him. He does not, that is, re-create England to the extent of making her seem quite real abroad; there she appears alien, remote, somewhat out of place. So, too, neither the Russian, the German, the Dane, the Portuguese, the Italian, nor the American can carry with him the flavour of his homeland in an essence sufficiently concentrated to withstand the insidious infiltration of a foreign atmosphere. To some extent the Scandinavian countries, Norway and Sweden, have this power; but Spain is thus gifted in the greatest measure. These three countries seem to possess a national unconsciousness which fends them off from too close a contact with lands which are foreign to them; perhaps one might almost accuse them of a lack of sensitiveness in certain aspects....