Spanish Culture

THE SPANIARDS ARE A FIERCE, idealistic, generous people, capable of great sacrifice and heroism when driven by their proud and burning passions, but they are also intolerant, dogmatic and individualistic. These characteristics tend to coexist in the Spanish soul and they make for a sense of contrast and subtle exaggeration observable in many forms, from religious to family life, from social to emotional relationships.

Religious festivals, the bullfight and dancing, to name three of the most common manifestations of Spanish folklore, contain in equal measures a sense of bursting life and a mysterious presentiment of death.

Nevertheless, the customs of Spain are changing. Traditional dances, bullfighting and funeral lamentations are less important than they were: even the traditional costumes are nowadays reserved for special circumstances or ceremonies for instance the women's shawl, the elegant manton de Manila, is displayed only at great festivals. The taverns one reads of in Don Quixote are disappearing as modern, American style hotels spring up.

All the same, the romanticism of the Andalusian region persists, as does the garrulous vivacity of its inhabitants, as courageous and fatalistic as their forefathers, the heirs of Moorish domination; and the healthy simplicity of the Castilians remains a people who live in villages that are almost lost in the vast desert countryside and who sometimes accompany their work with monotonous and mournful songs.

The Spaniards are an austere and dignified people, and full of a spirit of sacrifice which, in their religious processions, causes the faithful to drag themselves forward on their knees or climb barefoot by steep and thorny paths to sanctuaries that are almost inaccessible. Yet their humor and their taste for witticisms and jests are a fundamental part of the Spanish way of life.

Like all peoples accustomed for centuries to struggle against economic difficulties, like all races that are rather turned in on themselves and bound up in their own provincial traditions and customs, the Spaniards possess the philosophy of humble people, of poverty and renunciation. But it must not be forgotten that a large part of their character is that of the caballero, the hidalgo (hijo de algo, "son of somebody,"that is, of an important person). The psychology of the conquistadores, the mentality of Imperial and Catholic Spain, is still very much alive.