Why Spain is So Diverse

Until the advent of the airplane, the hard facts of Spain’s topog raphy stood in the way of every attempt at effective national organi zation. It is still difficult to reach Vigo from Barcelona by surface transportation, although both cities are in northern Spain. It is no wonder that the regional languages spoken in these two places are mutually unintelligible.

There are no navigible rivers reaching very far into Spain. There are, except in the northwest corner of the country, few good deepsea ports, and these are remote from coastal shipping lanes and cut off from the rest of Spain by mountains. Only two valleys lead in ward from the coast, those of the Guadalquivir in the far south and the Ebro in the northeast. There are few wide coastal strips, and these stop abruptly at the mountain wall that flanks the intericr. Back of that wall is the me seta, the high central tableland which is itself cut by steep valleys and chasms.

France is walled off by the Pyrenees. Four other major mountain ranges block the interior coastal access and break the me seta into transverse sections. A strip across the northern coast, mild in climate and green from ample rains, is divided from the rest of the peninsula by the Cantabrian Mountains. To the south, the Guadarramas split the meseta itself into a northern and southern plain identified now as Old Castile and New Castile. These are in turn cut off from Anda lusia in the south-central part of the country by the Sierra Morena. Rising above the southern coast, the Sierra Nevada keeps the interior of Andalusia from the seacoast of Malaga. These major ranges, together with some smaller mountain complexes, mark off the five great geographic zones of Spain. Portugal lies to the west, enjoying the better climate and gentler topography of lower altitudes.

The northernmost of the great zones of Spain is the green strip extending five hundred miles from the fjords of Galicia to the Costa Brava. This area is entirely unlike the rest of Spain. Estremadura, rolling and arid, lies in the southwest against Portugal. The eastern zone on the Mediterranean coast includes the old kingdoms of Valencia and Murcia. The southernmost zone is Andalusia, resem bling southern California. These four contrasting areas are all dom inated by the central plains of Castile which bear the rocky headwaters of the rivers. Higher in elevation than any other part of Europe out of the Alps, these plains are rigorous of climate, clear of air, subtle of color, denuded of forests; a land of sheep and goats, thin wheat fields and towns hardly distinguishable from the stones against which they are built.