Planted amid groves of olive trees, whitewashed villages with narrow streets nestle on mountainsides overlooking the sea. It is a medieval tableau, as captivating as that of battlemented castles standing sentinel over a sun-scorched plain farther north.
Mosques converted into churches, churches built over the ruins of mosques, palaces with courtyards adorned by cooling fountains, all crowd the cities. In some, orange trees line the streets and perfume the air.
For visitors, this is the essential Spain, a country of almost dreamlike quality, even if it mostly describes southern Spain. There is no country on Earth like it. It is enigmatic: Its soil is stained by rivers of blood, yet it is a land of gentility and graciousness. It is a country of enormous variety, from the Swisslike mountains of Galicia to the high, partly barren plateau-the meseta-on which most of the country rests. One out of four Spaniards speaks a language other than Spanish (primarily Catalan, Basque and Galician), and regional separatism has been a serious problem through much of Spanish history.
The balance of geography in Spain is precarious. The country is moored to the underbelly of Europe like an awkward appendage perhaps placed there by mistake. It thrusts upward from North Africa, narrowly escaping its embrace. This pull from opposite directions has helped to shape Spanish history, giving the country its singularity, its mystery, its romance.
Moors sweeping in from North Africa ruled the country for almost 800 years. Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans and Visigoths preceded them. Gypsies and Jews added their flavoring to the Spanish mix. Christian kings, advancing slowly and building the castles that span the countryside, conquered the Moors, expelled the Jews and some of the gypsies. Adventurers acting in their name then fanned out to create an empire that once dominated the world.
Spain`s contacts with the outside, and its absorption of foreign influences, have been episodic. More often than not, it has chosen to turn its back on the world and live behind walls of its own making. Like the English, Spaniards still speak of traveling to Europe as though they were separated from the rest of the continent by more than the Pyrenees Mountains.
This may engender a certain sense of national pride and exclusiveness. But Spain has benefitted most from the periods when, by invasion or by choice, it came into contact with other countries and cultures.
In the last two decades, Spain has undergone a change as profound as any in its history. Shaking off the devitalizing effects of nearly 40 years of dictatorship, it has peacefully reforged itself as a democracy, a form of government of which it previously had almost no experience. Spain has undergone a political and social revolution that has perhaps ended forever the long period of autocracy resting on the twin pillars of church and army. It has transformed the way in which Spanish people live.
Spain also has thrown off its isolation and resolutely set its face toward Europe. Its decisions to join the European Common Market in 1986 and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization four years earlier were of major historic importance.
Now Spain is preparing to celebrate its most recent return to the world, and the world will celebrate along with it. In a single year, 1992, Spain will host both the Olympic Games and the last world`s fair of this century, rounding out a 500-year period of its history that can be summarized as one of discovery, rise to power, decline, political upheaval, warfare, stagnation and resurgence. The Olympic Games will take place from July 25 to Aug. 9, principally in Barcelona. The world`s fair, known as Expo `92 and
commemorating the 500th anniversary of Columbus` discovery of America, will be held in Seville from April 20 to Oct. 12.
The European Community also has designated Madrid as cultural capital of Europe in 1992, a selection that will bring to Spain a harvest of art exhibits, concerts, opera and other events.
The Olympic Games in particular, through the medium of worldwide television, will ensure a focus on Spain that is overdue. U.S. Ambassador Joseph Zappala calls the events of 1992 ”Spain`s coming-out party.”
But in a sense, Spain had its coming out when it opened its borders in the 1960s to an unprecedented wave of tourism. Last year Spain drew more than 52 million tourists-by far exceeding its own population of nearly 40 million- and it has long been one of Europe`s most popular holiday destinations. But most tourists come to Spain only for its southern beaches-for ”sun and cheap sangria,” as one official put it. Much of the country is undiscovered and, without the benefit of the 1992 events, might remain so into a distant future. For tourism is in serious trouble, threatened by a rise in prices that has made the country as expensive as France or Italy and by a corresponding decline in standards of service. Either the industry will reform itself or wither.
Those visitors in 1992 who do forsake the beaches and penetrate the interior will find a Spain that, in terms of social and political change, has scaled in little more than two decades obstacles that other countries overcame on a much broader time scale. The old Spain of bullfights and flamenco, of gypsies and noble peasants, of strong, silent men and women with dark, flashing eyes, still exists. But these manifestations of Spain`s singularity, a difference rooted in both style and backwardness, are increasingly yielding to the elements of a new Spain and a new kind of Spaniard in many ways hardly distinguishable from his or her European neighbor.
The bankers and business executives who gaze out over the urban sprawl of Madrid from glass-covered skyscraper offices on the broad Paseo de la Castellana seem interchangeable with those of Milan, Frankfurt or London. The pace of life has quickened, except perhaps in the slow, indolent south. The country trails most of Europe in economic development but is rapidly catching up. Change in Spain seems irreversible.
There was a time in the late 1970s and early 1980s when Spaniards looked nervously over their shoulders and wondered if their new democracy would fall to military dictatorship. That time is past. The decisive moment for Spanish democracy came on the afternoon of Feb. 23, 1981, when a mustachioed Civil Guard officer, Lt. Col. Antonio Tejero Molina, burst into Congress with a detachment of his men and held the country`s top political leaders hostage for nearly 24 hours.
Tejero, acting on behalf of two dissident military commanders, had hoped to trigger an army uprising, and he claimed the support of King Juan Carlos. The king could at that moment have plunged Spain back into another long night of dictatorship. Instead he stood for democracy, and the rebellion collapsed. The army, which played a role in Spanish politics for centuries, is now firmly under civilian control. The reformed Spanish officer class has become well-educated, with most officers holding university degrees.
Spain`s transition to democracy was peaceful because it did not come about abruptly with the death of Generalissimo Francisco Franco on Nov. 20, 1975. In the late 1950s Franco had turned over management of the economy to a group of young technocrats who set out to transform the country. Franco also had trained Juan Carlos for the succession and announced his choice, several years before his death.
As the tourist boom began, millions of Spaniards were leaving the country to work in Western Europe. The money they sent home and the earnings from tourism produced an economic boom starting in 1961. Along with the boom came the beginnings of a social revolution.
For centuries, Spain had been one of the most Catholic nations on Earth. The reconquista-the reconquest of Spain from Moorish rule in 1492-only briefly preceded the onset of the Reformation. After driving out the Muslims, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella proceeded in the same year to expel the Jews who had been a part of Spanish life for hundreds of years. Spain was no longer prepared to accept religious dissidents, heretics and non-Christians; it became a bastion of the Counter-reformation. Protestants never were able to gain a toehold. The country was Catholic in the way that Saudi Arabia is Islamic.
But in the latter years of Franco, this began to change, and now Spain can fairly be considered a secular country. Surveys show that only about 17 percent of Spaniards attend Sunday mass regularly, and few share church views on important social questions. Post-Franco governments have legalized divorce, birth control and abortion, all with few ripples of dissent. ”Even the Catholic Church didn`t strongly oppose these laws,” says Amando de Miguel, a leading sociologist. ”That`s the intriguing factor.” He thinks the church bowed to change because it recognized a lack of public support.
Just as legal ramparts have been breached, so have social mores. Before the civil war of 1936-9, some women in the south still veiled their faces like Muslims. An anthropologist traveling through Spain in the 1950s reported that even engaged couples were not accustomed to kissing on the mouth. A woman`s virginity was considered virtually a sine qua non for marriage. Girls and boys never attended mixed schools. And the Franco regime was so prim that boxing matches were kept out of movie newsreels because it was considered indecent to show barechested men. Newspaper retouchers were required to paint tank tops on photographs of boxers.
Within 15 years or so, Spain went through a sexual revolution that elsewhere took much longer. Now even the most sleazy aspects of sexual freedom are commonplace. Pornography of every description is sold on newsstands, and even some villages have topless bars and sex shops. Live sex is performed at nightclubs. Mate-swapping is said to occur at certain bars and private clubs in Barcelona.
Young couples, who not long ago would have engaged in discreet courtships, indulge publicly in some of the most passionate displays of affection to be seen anywhere. A Spanish woman suggested there was an economic reason for this: Today`s young people, because of the high cost of housing and the shortage of jobs, often have to live with their parents until about age 30. They indulge their passions on the street, she said, ”because they have no other place to go.”
Women`s rights have expanded in some ways that are dramatic, in others more modestly. Under Franco, a woman could not take a job, start a business or open a bank account without her husband`s consent. She needed his approval to sell any of their joint property, but he didn`t need hers. These laws have been scrapped, and more women have entered the working world, although many still stop work when they marry. Women complain that they are paid less than men for comparable work, and few women reach the top rungs in business and the professions. But in this respect Spain may not be that different from the rest of Europe.
Despite rapid changes, Spanish society has remained unusually peaceful, belying the reputation of the Spanish for violence, cruelty and passion. When the Romans conquered Spain, with difficulty, the writer Livy referred to the
”Spanish fury.” Spain`s reputation for violence impressed itself on the world during the Inquisition, when thousands of heretics were tortured and burned to death. The Spanish conquistadores of the 16th Century were famed for their ruthlessness, and Spain`s history from 1833 to 1939 was one of repeated warfare. In the civil war that brought Franco to power in 1939, horrible atrocities were committed by both sides.
But Amando de Miguel, the sociologist, argues that Spain is ”a pacific, nonviolent society, contrary to the stereotype.” He points to the fact that Spain has an extremely low crime rate (although drug abuse has become a major national concern), and its figures on homicides and suicides are among the lowest in Europe. Twice in this century, De Miguel notes, Spaniards have changed a regime of military dictatorship without the loss of a single life. Certainly, one of the characteristics of Spanish life that visitors have remarked upon repeatedly over the years is the extraordinary courtesy and helpfulness of Spanish people. Even though De Miguel thinks this attitude is only skin-deep, many foreigners who have traveled widely would probably accord Spaniards the title of Europe`s friendliest people.
They have remained so despite growing urbanization and a quickened pace of life. With their country`s increased wealth, the Spanish also have followed people in other developed countries in becoming almost obsessively materialistic. Many Spanish seek the road to riches not necessarily through hard work but through the lottery. There are scores of lotteries offering fabulous prizes every week, and millions of players. ”The Spanish people dream of becoming rich in one day,” de Miguel says. ”It`s the equivalent of the American dream, except that it is the reverse of the Protestant ethic.”
During war, Franco granted to the Spanish National Society for the Blind the right to conduct a tax-free lottery. Since the 1980s, it has doubled its assets every year and now ranks as one of Spain`s biggest businesses, even larger than the automobile industry. The Society has parlayed its profits into a media empire, buying up television and radio stations and newspapers.
The Spanish admire that success story, and they have even made a hero of a guard with a private security firm who robbed a bank of hundreds of millions of pesetas. When he appeared on a TV program, people in the audience mobbed him for his autograph.
In the cultural realm, Spain is still recovering from the Franco era. Before the civil war, the country produced such world-famous artists as Pablo Picasso, Joan Miro and Salvador Dali. No contemporary Spanish artist has achieved their stature. In music, Spain has given the world Placido Domingo, Jose Carreras, Victoria de los Angeles, Monserrat Caballe and Teresa Berganza. But it is hardly a land of opera. Until recently, it had only one fully functioning opera house.
”Culture was not a subject for Franco,” says Maria Corral, director of the Queen Sophia Museum in Madrid. ”It did not exist at that time.” Partly that was because Franco mistrusted artists whom he regarded as
revolutionaries. He felt safe only with classical painting, and it was not until 1963 that he allowed a collection of Picasso paintings to go on display in Barcelona.
Abstract and other nonfigurative art was not introduced generally in Spain until about 15 years ago, according to Rosa Maria Subirana, former director of the Picasso Museum in Barcelona. ”Abstract art became fashionable through the galleries,” she says. ”Now every Spanish city wants to have a contemporary art museum.” Valencia has a new one, another is being built in Barcelona and the Queen Sophia is the citadel of modern art in Madrid.
Madrid has overtaken Barcelona as Spain`s leading arts center. The government has organized major international exhibitions there, and the new generation of businessmen who are the primary patrons of art are centered in the capital. Some well-heeled politicians also have become collectors.
”Before, the politicians all had the Guernica poster,” Subirana says, referring to Picasso`s painting of the bombing of Guernica during the civil war. ”Now they buy contemporary art.”
Along with everything else happening in 1992, Madrid will become the site of the first public display of one of the world`s great private art collections. Baron Hans Heinrich von Thyssen-Bornemisza, whose villa in Lugano, Switzerland, houses more than 1,500 works of art dating from the 13th to the 20th Centuries, has agreed to allow his collection to be shown in Spain for 10 years. Germany and Britain bid for the collection, offering more money than Spain did, but von Thyssen apparently chose Spain because his fifth wife, the former Carmen Cevera, is Spanish.
Politically, Spain is in its ninth year of socialist rule. The country was governed by conservative parties led by former associates of Franco in the first seven years after the caudillo`s death in 1975. But the Socialists of Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez have won an absolute majority in the last three elections and may call new elections in late 1992. The conservative military establishment`s willingness to accept a socialist government was earlier one of the milestones of Spain`s new democracy.
