Top Quotes: “Iberia” — James Michener
“Why did Spain, when she was already one of the richest countries in Europe, spend so much energy gaining control of the riches of the New World, then allowing this influx of gold and silver to generate an inflation which converted her into the poorest country in Europe and one of the poorest in the world? This is a perplexing question, for it touches upon one of the real tragedies of history and has implications for present nations. I used to consider this self-impoverishment of Spain a tragedy that could not be explained and assumed that it had occurred without anyone’s being aware of the problem; but that is not so. Recent studies have proved that certain Spanish theorists in the sixteenth century understood that a sudden importation of raw wealth which had not been created by productive work within the nation would create an inflation which would bankrupt Spain, and they warned against it. But they were not listened to. Why?”
“Prior to the industrial revolution which reformed the face of Europe, Spain was a leader in the manufacture of quality goods, a leader in world trade and a leader in agriculture. Had she merely projected this leadership at a normal rate of growth and had she been able to make the relatively simple adjustments that were afoot throughout the rest of Europe, she would probably have remained the leader in manufacturing, trade and agriculture and might even have improved her relative position. Instead, almost consciously and with calculated arrogance, she dedicated herself to an opposite course. She hamstrung her manufacturers, restricted her trade and crippled her agriculture. Within a few generations world leadership in these crucial fields had passed into the hands of France, Germany and England, and to a lesser degree, Italy.”
“Early in my study I discovered that most of the Spanish heroes who had operated in the Americas had come from Extremadura. The New World was won for Spain not by gentlemen from Toledo and Sevilla but by a group of uneducated village louts who, realizing that they had no future in their hard homeland, had volunteered for service overseas.”
“Ideally every Spaniard, male or female, has two surnames, the first and more important being the father’s and the second the mother’s. Thus Pedro Pérez Montilla can properly be referred to as Señor Pérez Montilla or simply as Señor Pérez, but to refer to him as Señor Montilla would be a real gaffe. Spanish also has the handy little words Don and Doña, which have no equivalent in English and cannot be translated; they are used only preceding a given name, allowing one to refer to a man or woman by the given name with no presumption of intimacy. Thus our friend can be called Don Pedro or Señor Don Pedro Pérez Montilla. When he married, let us say to Leocadia Blanco Alvarez, his wife did not surrender her surnames but merely added his, preceded by the preposition de (of), so that her name became Leocadia Blanco de Pérez Montilla, and she may properly be addressed as Doña Leocadia, or as Señora Blanco, or as Señora B Alvarez, or as Señora Blanco Alvarez de Pérez Monti or as Señora de Pérez Montilla. Frequently the paternal and maternal surnames are joined by either a hyphen or an y (and), which means that Don Pedro’s son could be named Antonio Pérez Blanco, or Antonio Pérez-Blanco, or Antonio Pérez y Blanco, although in recent years the last has become less frequent. Many Spaniards today, in common usage, simply omit the maternal surname entirely or abbreviate it to a single letter.”
“The problem is further complicated when a man has a family name which is unusually common and a maternal name which is less so, for then he becomes known by the more distinctive of his two names, which is only sensible. The five most common Spanish surnames, in order of frequency, are García, Fernández, López, González and Rodriguez, and just as the Englishman named Smith or Jones is accustomed to adding a hyphenated second name, such as Smith-Robertson, so the Spaniard becomes García Montilla, sometimes with the hyphen. It is in conformity with this custom that the great Spanish poet Federico García Lorca is so often referred to simply by his maternal name. Anglo-Saxon readers encounter difficulties with the names of such historical figures as Spain’s two cardinals who exercised political leadership, Mendoza and Cisneros; in history books you will find many pages about them, and they were at least as famous as Richelieu in France and Wolsey in England, yet if you try to look them up in a Spanish encyclopedia you will find nothing unless you happen to know that the former was born Pedro González de Mendoza and the latter Gonzalo Jiménez de Cisneros. In each of these instances, however, the distinctive name is not maternal but merely a place name added in hopes of making a common name distinctive.”
“An American couple working at a United States Navy base could not find quarters on the base but did find a comfortable house in a nearby town. They had a thirteen-year-old daughter who went to the local school. One Thursday the parents arranged for her to be picked up by friends at the base and to stay with them overnight. At five o’clock that afternoon two officers of the Guardia Civil appeared, saying, “Señora, your daughter has not passed our headquarters this day. Is there trouble?” It is said that every human being who lives in the Spanish countryside must be personally known to the guardia, who are able to report on that person’s movements, ideas and behavior.”
“A comprehension of the Spaniard’’s addiction to Viva yo will help anyone trying to make his way in Spain. When the little car barrels right down the middle of the highway, forcing everyone else into the ditch, you don’t swear at the driver. You say “Viva yo” and you understand what happened and why. When you pay seven dollars for a seat at the bullfight and find it occupied by a man who will not move, you don’t punch him. You say “Viva yo” and steal someone else’s seat.”
“Tribally, they were composed from such varied sources as Berbers of the Atlas Mountains, who comprised the vast majority of the early invaders, and men from former Roman colonies reaching from Morocco to Egypt. They were a mixed lot.”
“When the fanatical fundamentalists of Islam, the Almoravids, conquered southern Spain in 1086, only to be supplanted in 1146 by the even more fanatical Almohads, there were no Arabs whatever in their ranks. Both groups were composed principally of mountain wild men recently converted to Islam and of the opinion that Arab leadership, what there was of it, had gone soft and was ignoring the true teaching of Muhammad. Of any thousand Islamic invaders chosen at random through the centuries, I suppose not more than three or four could have been Arabs, but Spanish writers have felt that in surrendering to Arab superiority there was honor, but in losing to Berber inferiority there was ignominy.”
“In the eyes of Córdobans, the North African tribes from which they had originally sprung were little more than savages to be imported now and then for military service. Córdoba was a mighty metropolis when Granada was a provincial headquarters, and it was not until Spanish Christians captured the city and ended the empire that Granada, protected by a rim of mountains, came into its own as the last great Muslim city in Spain. Córdoba was lost to Islam as early as 1236; Granada hung on till 1492, and that accounts for the predominance of the latter during the concluding centuries of Muslim rule.”
“Spain more than any other European nation has abused its land. It is in this respect that Spain is guilty of the charge that Frenchmen so often make against her, that she is not a European nation but an African: “Africa begins at the Pyrenees.” Demographically this is not so; in the abuse of natural resources it is.”
“The country was filled with virtual paupers who maintained their classification as gentlemen by refusing to work; they starved but they remained gentlemen. Although such a system had deleterious effects on farming and manufacturing, it had the virtues of not being based exclusively on money or big houses; a man with one room and one suit, if he carried himself properly, could be just as much a gentleman as a man with a palace, and this universal eligibility has permitted a friendship between economic classes which has not existed in other European countries.”
“In the year 1400 the arrogant nobles of the major European countries were about equal in the power they exercised, but one by one the other European nations, in the order named, underwent revolutions of fact and spirit which cut back the absolute power of their nobles and transferred that power to a new and educated middle class, from which would come the political and industrial leaders of the future. In Spain this did not happen; on the contrary, the nobles arrogated more and more power to themselves, so that as late as the nineteenth century they dominated Spanish life, especially in the countryside. They told priests what they might and might not preach; they terrorized schoolteachers; they put newspapermen out of business; they exercised control over the cabinet, the army, the Church hierarchy and agriculture. Even today, as we shall see later when discussing a typical business operation in Madrid, they dominate Spanish life. No other nobility in the world compares in power and wealth with Spain’s, and as one watches it in operation the only parallel he can find is the operation of the Hungarian nobility in the late 1700s.
If the Spanish nobility had exercised a leadership commensurate with its privilege, as was frequently the case in England and France, Spain would have prospered, but that did not happen. When Spain needed industrialization, the nobles said no. When Spain required a first-class army and navy to defend its empire, the nobles insisted upon using these services as their private play-things, with one general for every ten or fifteen men, and so abused the army that it fell from being the best in Europe to the worst. When the Church should have been doing what it did in all other major countries, adjusting religion to a changing world, the nobles, through their occupancy of high positions, refused to allow speculation. No nation in Europe, except possibly Hungary and Rumania, has been so badly served by its upper classes as Spain. With the intellectual and moral capacity to govern, they refused to do so; instead of seeking the common good they sought their own preferment, and the gap between them and the people became tragically wide.”
“Then if an American woman traveling alone wished to eat in a restaurant at night, even inside her own hotel, the head waiter would place before her a small American flag to warn the Spanish dandies that this one was not a prostitute, even though she was eating alone in public; now women frequent cafés alone, a thing quite impossible even five years ago.”
“Then anything like a cafeteria would have been an insult to the Spanish way of life. A few were attempted but they were derided as American abominations; now grab-and-run restaurants are not only popular but essential, because the noontime break in offices is being shortened from three hours to two or even one. The most popular medium-priced restaurants in Madrid today are chrome-brightened places with names like California, Nebraska, lowa and Samoa, the American name having become an asset rather than a liability.”
““While other world powers were able to marshal their strength, Spain sank into a hundred-year sleep.”
The decline was real and I believe, in spite of Kamen’s argument to the contrary, that the Inquisition was largely to blame. For almost four centuries it enforced an intellectual conformity and rejected all minorities. The Moors, the Jews, the Illuminati, the Jesuits and the Protestants were expelled and their ideas with them. Spain thus became the next nation in a tragic series who decided to fence out new ideas rather than welcome them and she suffered the inescapable penalty. An oyster can live to itself, but without grains of sand for agitation it cannot produce pearls.
Walking one night along the ramparts of Avila, I reasoned, “If Spain had kept her Moors, her agriculture and manufacturing would have prospered. If she had kept her Jews, her commercial management would have kept pace with England’s. If she had retained a few inquiring Protestant professors, her universities might have remained vital. And if she had held onto her Illuminati, her spiritual life would have been renewed.” But then I had to face the greater reality. “If she had done these things, she’d now be a better Spain. But she wouldn’t be Spain.””
“In 1704 the English had occupied the rock [of Gibraltar] during a war in which Spain performed poorly.”
