ROMANTIC SPAIN* 



By Charles Upson Clark, of Yale University 



SPAIN is still almost a terra incog- 

 nita. The stern and yet fascinating 

 country whose sons once dominated 

 Europe and brought their language and 

 their civilization to the western world 

 has not yet been spoiled by the tourist. 

 Cut off from the rest of Europe by the 

 Pyrenees and the sea — forming, in fact, 

 a detached bit of Africa — Spain has 

 gone on through the centuries preserving 

 countless ancient traits which give her 

 life and people a peculiar stamp. 



Since Spanish railways and hotels 

 make traveling almost as simple a matter 

 ^as in Italy, and the people are fully as 

 courteous and honorable as any other, 

 the American need not hesitate to include 

 Spain in his itinerary, and may look for- 

 ward to a wonderfully interesting ex- 

 perience. He will not, however, get the 

 full benefit of it unless he is at home 

 in Spanish history and not wholly ig- 

 norant of the language. 



Nowhere else does the past, with its 

 great warnings against pride, intolerance, 

 and extravagance, so impress even the 

 casual passer-by ; and one is about as 

 likely to find an English-speaking person 

 in Spain as to find one who knows Span- 

 ish in New England. 



Journeying into Spain from France, 

 the traveler is promptly notified by a 

 change of gauge at the frontier that even 

 the railroads in Spain are different. 

 Their gauge is over a foot wider than 

 that of central Europe and of America; 

 so passengers must change cars and 

 freight be transshipped. This wide gauge 

 is a great advantage, and American rail- 

 road men sigh for it. It enables more 

 powerful locomotives and more capa- 

 cious cars to be used, though the Span- 

 iards have not yet risen to their oppor- 

 tunities. Their railway equipment is in 



general behind the times, although one 

 or two through trains are equal to the 

 best elsewhere, and I remember seeing 

 a new Munich locomotive so powerful 

 that it whisked twenty loaded passenger 

 coaches up a grade with little effort. 



By noticing the plaques on the engines, 

 which tell when and where thev were 

 made, one can watch on Spanish rail- 

 ways the entire development of the loco- 

 motive. They come from everywhere, 

 and seem never to be made into scrap. 

 I have seen engines dating from the 50's 

 still in use, and it was especially interest- 

 ing to see machines which announce that 

 they hail from Gravenhausen, Depart- 

 ment du Bas-Rhin, thus proving that they 

 date from before 1870, when Alsace 

 became German territory. 



European railroad practice is far be- 

 hind ours in the use of air brakes on 

 freight trains, and Spain is especially 

 backward here, since few of her freight 

 cars have even hand brakes. That leads 

 to amusing methods of switching cars. 

 When a brakeless car is started down its 

 track the brakeman runs beside it and 

 sets pebbles on the rail before it. These 

 soon overcome its momentum. In the 

 Madrid yards one sees a refinement of 

 this system. At the end is a track run- 

 ning at right angles across the others ; 

 on this moves an electric engine, pushing 

 a large platform on wheels, like one of 

 our turn-tables. By means of a chain 

 and capstan, the engine hauls the car to 

 be switched upon this platform, and then 

 pushes the load to the proper track. The 

 car, when released, has considerable mo- 

 mentum ; when the brakeman wants to 

 stop it, he sets an ingenious iron shoe 

 on the rail in front of the car. The 

 car mounts the shoe, which is thereby 

 knocked off the track ; the brakeman 



* The illustrations are from photographs by the author unless otherwise indicated. 



