Andalusia

Nearly one fifth of all Spaniards live in the eight southern prov inces now called Andalusia. Closest to Africa, to most of the early Mediterranean powers and to the New World, the Andalusians come nearest idealizing the non-Spaniard’s notion of Spain. Andalusia is the tourist’s Spain. It is the Spain of the travel posters, the “Spanish” dance and “Spanish” music. The fact that it is considered exotic by the other Spaniards is rarely appreciated outside of Spain. But throughout Iberian history it has been thought of as a region apart. In Roman days it was administered separately as Baetica. In Crusa der days it was the land of the Saracen. But the Andalusian does not consider himself exotic. The struggle for a livelihood occupies him in spite of the relative gentleness of the climate and the landscape. The essential difference is that somewhere along the way, perhaps in the flush of Moorish prosperity, he learned to enjoy himself in his spare time.

Andalusia has its share of the forbidding mountainous area of Spain. The Sierra Nevadas are the highest mountains south of the French border. The bulky Sierra Morena barricades the Andalusian plain from the meseta in the north and forms the political boundary” between the south and Castile. It divides the valley of the Guadal quivir, which is the heart of Andalusia, from the bed of the Guadiana which reaches back into the Castilian plains of La Mancha, This accident of topography made it possible for the Moorish power to persist two or three centuries beyond the time when the momen tum of the Christian reconquest might have been expected to sweep the peninsula clean. In so doing, it made it possible for Andalusia to develop fully its social, ethnic, cultural and economic characteristics and give Spain one more region difficult to assimilate into the unified nation.

In addition to the plain of which Cordoba was queen, matching its Moorish sister, Damascus, in the east, Andalusia includes the kingdom of Granada and the narrow sun-beaten coasts of Almeria and Malaga, the shore of the Straits of Gibraltar and Cadiz on the Atlantic. It thus takes in almost all the permanent Moorish monu ments left in Spain, including the Alhambra, the Giralda tower at Seville and the Mosque of Cordoba.

Almeria is really an extension of the Murcian coast, rounding the corner of the Sierra Nevada where that mountain range forms the square southeast corner of the peninsula, facing Morocco. The port was founded by the Phoenicians, probably to ship out the iron ore it still exports along with the grapes and fruits for which the region is now more famous. It served as a seaport for Granada until it fell to the Catholic monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabel. The province back of the port is dry and mountainous, difficult of access and sparsely peopled.

Malaga, although smaller than Almeria and backed into the Sierra, is nevertheless, more prosperous and more populous. Like Almeria, Malaga was both Phoenician and Granadan, with a long history of occupation by contending powers between these two eras. As a first class port, it has always been a rich prize. Its greatest import is Euro pean tourists and its greatest exports have been Malaga grapes and wine, raisins, fruit, fish and olive oil. It is one of the finest winter resorts on the Mediterranean.

Cadiz, on the Atlantic, polyglot, politically conscious and enterpris ing, may be the oldest city in Europe. It shares the Phoenician origins of Spain’s other south coast ports and, like most o them, was lo cated because of the trade in metals, in this case tin and the silver^of Biblical Tarshish. The fortunes of the city have risen and fallen with the fortunes of the various rulers of Spain, but it knew its greatest days as the Roman port of Gades and as a principal Spanish point of embarkation for the American colonies. The province includes Jerez, which makes and ships its sherry wine to all parts of the world.

Huelva is farther north on the Atlantic coast, its port also associ ated with the adventure into the New World. Columbus sailed out of the estuary of the Rio Tinto in 1492 and returned to it in 1493. Hernando Cortez landed there in 1528 after his conquest of Mexico. Huelva still exports the copper and sulphur of the Rio Tinto mines. In earlier times it also shipped tin for the manufacture of bronze. The province of Huelva, thinly peopled, borders Portugal and ex tends into the Sierra Morena.

Portugal had no separate identity until the twelfth century. Roman Baetica included at least Algarve province, which retains the char acteristics of Andalusia and thus differs noticeably from northern Portugal as the Spanish Andalusian differs from the Galician.

The capital of Baetica was Seville, which has become again, as it has so often in the history of the peninsula, the metropolitan center of Andalusia. It is first today in manufacture and trade, an archepiscopal see and a university city. The Archives of the Indies, located in Seville, draw a stream of scholars from outside Spain. The city’s eminence in the south is due to its location on the Guadalquivir and the natural riches of its countryside. Its river port accommodates ocean-going vessels. Its products are many and varied, from the tobacco manufacture celebrated in the opera Carmen to heavy machinery. But it is more significant in the life of modern Spain as the center of a regional culture older than the more vigorous and politically dominant regions of the north.

Andalusia has given its own flavor to North and South America.

From the southern Andes to the northern Rockies, a span of ten thousand miles, a cowboy is a vaquero or buckaroo. Likewise, the sombrero and the rest of the costume of the rider, the manner of handling horse, burro and cow, and the music of the guitar are Andalusian. Andalusia synthesized Crete and Phoenicia and Greece, Arabia and North Africa and Rome and, after placing on them the Iberian stamp, transferred them to the Western Hemisphere.

Andalusia assumed this special role of purveyor of culture long ago. Unlike most of Spain, it is fully vulnerable from the sea. The unending beauty of its landscape and climate induce gentleness rather than vigor, refinement rather than innovation. As a result, one would expect a people more adapted to seducing a conqueror than to resisting him and more adapted to art and philosophy than to war. Indeed, the Arabic philosophers brought Andalusia lasting prestige in the world, as have the later Christian artists like Velazquez and Murillo. Arab and Christian rulers found it im possible to develop sufficient martial spirit here to defend the land from the next wave of aggression. It has been overrun at least ten times in history. When the Moorish civilization became rich and soft here, new waves of wild Berbers, crossing the Strait, carried it away in a sea of swords. And in turn these tribes, softened by Andalusian living, were carried away by the next wave from beyond the Atlas mountains.

While Seville has grown and prospered in recent times, Cordoba has setded into its past. The great province of Cordoba, once the seat of the Omayyad caliphate, the glory of western Islam, now has only a little more than three quarters of a million people. The capital city is a living museum only faintly reminiscent of the in tellectual and commercial vigor its great Moorish and Jewish citizens gave it. Its mosque and bridge and narrow streets seem to today’s visitor to be the work of an earlier and superior people. It was, of course, one of the richest and most brilliant cities of the world when Maimonides was teaching and when the Cordovan leather, gold and silver work were sought after.

The melancholy of Cordoba also pervades Granada, although this last capital of the Moors in Spain offers a more modern appearance. The province of Granada, which includes the highest mountain peak entirely within Spain, is partly Alpine in character. It presents dramatic differences in height and valley, wealth and poverty, bar ren slopes and lush meadows, thus differing sharply in physical appearance as well as in spirit from the valley of the Guadalquivir.

Granada holds as strong a sentimental place in Spanish thought as the political, artistic and commercial place it held in the Moorish power complex. As the Moors were compressed century after cen tury by the southward expanding Christian kingdoms, the last flowering of Arab culture was concentrated here and lasted more than one hundred years after the destiny of the peninsula around had been decided, and even Cordoba and Seville were in the hands of the Castilian kings. So brilliant was this flowering that nearly five centuries later and after the forced exile of the people, it shines through the overlay of Christian religion, Spanish language and industrial revolution. It was finally conquered in a state of political collapse brought about by the fatal feuds of its ruling families. This seemed poetic justice, since the Moors themselves first overran the peninsula in a time of political and military weakness brought on by quarrels among the Visigothic rulers. The Visigoths them selves had settled in during the dissolution of Rome, which itself had been weakened by continual quarrels over the spoils of conquest.

The Alhambra and surrounding buildings and gardens remain. Aside from these antiquities, Granada is a busy city occupied with agriculture and light industry which, although perhaps less vigorous than in Moorish times, represent an important part of the modern Spanish economy. The Vega, the great meadow below the city, still renders harvests that are an exception to the usual modesty of Spanish yields.

Human life has sustained itself in the favored country about Granada for a long time, perhaps longer than anywhere else in Europe, as recent discoveries suggest. Yet the way of living has not changed greatly, except in response to the rise and fall of alien civilizations centered within the city itself. In the mountains some still live in caves as they were living when the first invaders passed through. These people regard the Roman walls, Moorish towers and Christian belfries with a certain tranquility.

North of Granada is the province of Jaen which, like the north of Cordoba province, is a transition between the warm south and the me seta of Castile. Jaen occupies the upper valley of the Guadal quivir and as such is a northeastward extension of Cordoba, with about the same density of population and the same agriculture built around the olive and the grape. Its lead mines are important to Spain. Jaen has never been an important political center, but has usually been content to serve as a prosperous extension of the territories of nearby caliphates. It was an independent kingdom only for a short time. The city enjoys better communications than most inland centers of Spain, due to its location in the valley that opens the way between New Castile and the south.

Andalusia, like the once heavily Arab areas of the eastern coast of Spain, manages to sustain a fairly constant population on the dependable methods of Moorish agriculture. It is a region of large landholders and landless peasants, a situation that in Spain, as in other parts of the world, has led to political crisis. In this respect it differs greatly from the northern strip of Spain which is largely peopled by small farm owners. Likewise, Andalusia’s barren areas contrast sharply with places of better soil fertility and rainfall, so that the small landholder is less likely to prosper than one in the north. This situation has arisen partly from the nature of the land and partly from the political history of the region. The Castilian military families were often rewarded for their service to the crown in the long and difficult campaigns against the Saracen by large grants of land which made them, however impecunious in their native villages, landed aristocrats in the new south. It is not unusual to come upon a coat of arms in a small town in Asturias or Santander which records the family name of some modern grandee with a vast Andalusian principality.