The Meseta Border Provinces

Somewhere in the remote gorges of the Cantabrian Mountainshistory says at Covadonga in the province of Asturias a pre-Castilian hero first defeated the invincible Moorish soldiery. In that act, Castile was born, and the extension of the victory ended with the conquest of Granada. The intervening eight centuries created Castile and the nation. Castile is synonymous with religious war. The motive for the conquest of the peninsula was a religious one, an impulse so strong that it built first the Spanish State, then an em pire, until it finally almost destroyed itself. The character of the Castilian has been developed fully in this process of defeat, rebirth, conquest and self-destruction. From the time of the skirmish at Covadonga to the dissolution of the Spanish empire was about one thousand years, from the eighth to the eighteenth centuries.

The Castilian carries within him, as if in his genes, the character of the Spanish nation. He cannot be understood apart from the history of Spain, nor can Spain be understood apart from him.

In the eighth century the pre-Castilians inhabited a few valleys hidden in the mountains of the old kingdom of Asturias. The native stock was Iberian. These people had managed to keep intact in Roman and Visigothic times, but had embraced the religion of Rome. Nearly two thousand years after Roman domination the Asturians were still resisting authority when it did not suit them, and in 1934 the Asturian coal miners went out on strike in a prelude to the Spanish civil war. During the war they distinguished themselves in the same way, first in the bitter siege of Oviedo and then in the heroic actions of their military units known as Dynamiters. Asturias is one of the industrial centers of Spain. Oviedo, once the seat of the Asturian kings, is now a city of mining and manufacturing. Even the Romans mined coal there.

Outside Oviedo, the province of Asturias is sparsely populated because of the rugged nature of the mountains that make up most of its territory, the principal seaport being Gijon on the Bay of Biscay.

The pre-Castilians incorporated Galicia and Leon into their ex panding kingdom. In the tenth century the capital was moved south to Leon.

Leon now comprises the provinces of Leon, Palencia, Salamanca, Valladolid and Zamora. It is a transitional region between the Cantabrian Mountains and the meseta. Galicia and Portugal lie in the west. The boundaries of the old kingdom were extended southward as the land was taken from the Moors, in the traditional pattern of the reconquest. Thus Leon shared with its neighboring northern kingdoms the close frontiers east and west where fellow Christian people lived, while it elongated south into Saracen ter ritory. The region of Leon is austere in character, thinly populated and backward in method, although there are coal mines and forests in the north near Asturias. Zamora and Salamanca flank Portugal across the upper Duero River basin and into the Sierra de Gata. Both are arid and pastoral, with some marginal agriculture. Their capital cities have been strategic in many wars. The city of Salamanca has been better known as an educational center since its establishment in the thirteenth century. Oddly enough, it was known in Europe both for its Christian theology and its Arabic philosophy. It is the most venerable of the fountainheads of Castilian culture, playing a critical part in the primacy of Castilian language and thought on the peninsula.

The provinces of Palencia and Valladolid lie farther east and higher in the Duero watershed. Grain and wool are their principal products, as throughout the high meseta. The city of Valladolid has been important since the early years of the reconquest as capital of the Castilian kings. Much of the history of Spain was made here until the removal of the capital to Madrid. It has been a rival of Salamanca as a seat of learning.

Leon shares the meseta with Aragon and the two Castiles. Old Castile itself was at one time a county of Leon, lying west of Palencia where both the Duero and the Ebro rise among their narrow defiles. For lack of a traditional name, it was called Castile, dotted as it was with the castle strongholds of the wars against the Moors.

Leon thus is older than even Old Castile, although it was in turn an offspring of Asturias in the long historical development of the Castilian people and culture. The eldest son of the king of Spain is always called the Prince of Asturias, while the universities of Leon consider themselves the mother of the language. Where the Aragonese represent a problem of regional differences solved long ago in favor of Castile, Asturias and Leon are as close to Castilian as most of the parts of Castile are to each other. Yet the western reaches of both Asturias and Leon border the Galician province of Lugo and share with it some Germanic and Celtic influences. These areas, too, are outside the meseta and thus mother to a people with out the Castilian temperament. But these distinctions are not predominant since all this part of Spain except the most remote mountains were long enough under Roman and Moorish rule for the people to acquire laws, language, religion and methods from them,

Leon at its worst is bleak, with thin, powdery soil, dry stream beds and scarcely enough grass for goats and sheep. But it has also its oak and walnut and chestnut groves and its clear streams. The architecture of its towns is distinct, its houses made of hewn wood, mortar and stone. The Leonese way of making houses and build ings sometimes turns up in faraway places of the earth, like Cebu or San Luis Obispo. Each of the towns and cities of the meseta has a distinctive coloring, often like the stone and sand and soil of the region, which identifies it from a distance in the clear air. Salamanca’s buildings have a patina acquired during the centuries that gives a dull gold appearance in the sunshine.

Aragon and Leon flank the meseta and spill out upon it, occupy ing its eastern and western extremities.

The other peripheral provinces are Badajoz and Caceres, which together form the region called Estremadura in the southwest on the Portuguese border. Here the highlands are cut by the Tagus and Guadiana Rivers. Estremadura is separated by the Sierra Morena from the comparatively fertile Andalusian valleys and is a sparse grazing pasture at best, although there are some favored places where vineyards, wheat fields and olive groves thrive. This region is an extensive tract of land taken by the Christians from the Moors and largely awarded to the families of the Crusaders. It is a poor land, only sparsely populated and suffering from absentee landlordism and emigration. Many of the conquistadores came from here, im pelled toward the new world partly by the impetus of reconquest and partly no doubt by the dream of faraway riches. Caceres is now a cork and leather center. Badajoz, once the capital of a vast Moorish emirate, looks as if it had known better days. The houses of the small aristocracy, like those of Trujillo, are crumbling above their doorways.

The history of Estremadura has been intertwined with that of Portugal, and the manner of speaking in its provinces is strange to the rest of Spain.