Heroic Spain

TRAVEL in Spain to-day is attended with little hardship and no danger whatever. Even if one barely knows a word of the language, it is not foolhardy to explore the distant provinces. Commit a few simple sentences to the memory and have courage in using them, for Spanish is pronounced just as it is spelled, with a few exceptions soon observed. The merest beginner is understood.


When a trip into Spain is planned it would be well to send for information about the kilometric ticket to the Chemins de Fer Espagnols, 20 Rue Chauchat, Paris. They will mail you, gratis, a pamphlet with a map of the country, where is marked the number of kilometers between the cities; from this it is easy to calculate how large a ticket to buy. The more kilometers taken at one time, the cheaper it is. Thus a ticket of 2,000 k. costs 165 pesetas; one of 5,000 k. costs 385 p., and so on. We got a 10,000 kilometric ticket for two people, first class, good for ten months, paying for it 682 pesetas. If the ticket is bought outside of Spain you pay for it in francs, whereas if bought in Spain, you pay in pesetas, which are about fifteen per cent less than francs. Provide yourself with your photograph, and at the first Spanish town—Irún, if you come from Paris, and Port-Bou if from Marseilles—as there is always a pause of some hours on the frontier for the customs, it is a simple matter to buy your carnet kilométrique in the station. It is only on one or two short local lines that these tickets are not accepted. Unfortunately the new rail from Gibraltar up to Bobadilla, by way of which many tourists enter Spain, is one of these disobliging minor lines. In fact many who start their trip from the south have found difficulty in procuring a kilometric ticket till they reached Seville or Granada; this confuses the traveler, and makes him decide the ticket is too complicated for practical use. If he comes to visit merely the southern province of Andalusia, which is what most people see of Spain, with a run up to Madrid for the pictures, then, unless several are traveling as one family, there is little gained by the carnet, since a few hundred unused miles are sometimes wasted. But for the complete tour of Spain the kilometric ticket is the most satisfactory arrangement. Besides the reduction it makes in the fare, it saves the confusion of changing money in the stations. You go to the ticket office before boarding a train, have the coupons to be used torn off, and are given a complementary ticket to hand to the conductor on the train. It is well to buy the official railway guide as it saves asking questions, for Spanish trains, though they crawl at a snail's pace, start at the hour announced, and arrive on the minute set down in the time-table.


Thirty kilos, about sixty-six pounds, are allowed free in the luggage van, but for an extensive tour it is better to send trunks ahead by some agency, and travel with only the valises taken with you in the carriage. These the mozo, or porter, carries directly from the train to the hotel omnibus, which—another good custom of the country—is always in waiting, no matter at what hour the arrival. First class travel in Spain is about the same as second class elsewhere; second class is like third class in France, except on the express route from Paris to Madrid, and in Catalonia, where second class is comfortable.


A hasty sketch of our tour may help later travelers. We entered from the north, by Biarritz, a far better way of seeing the country in its natural sequence than the usual landing at Gibraltar. One feels that the north of Spain, in the truest degree national, untouched by the Moor, has never had justice done it. If a transatlantic liner touched at one of the northern ports, such as Vigo, Santander, Bilbao, it would open up an untrodden Switzerland with fertile valleys and noble hills. No pleasanter summer tour, on bicycle or afoot, could be made than through the Basque provinces, Asturia