Spanish Life in Town And Country
Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II TYPES AND TRAITS IT is the fashion to-day to minimise the influence of the Goths on the national characteristics of the Spaniard. We are told by some modern writers that their very existence is little more than a myth, and that the name of their last King, Roderick, is all that is really known about them. The castle of Wamba, or at least the hill on which it stood, is still pointed out to the visitor in Toledo, perched high above the red torrent of the rushing Tagus; but little seems to be certainly known of this hardy Northern race which, for some three hundred years, occupied the country after the Romans had withdrawn their protecting legions. On the approach of the all-conquering Moor, many of the inhabitants of Spain took refuge in the inaccessible mountains of the north, and were the ancest
...ors of that invincible people known in Spain as '' los Montaneses,'' from whom almost all that is best in literature, as well as in business capacity, has sprung in later years. How much of the Celt-Iberian, or original inhabitant of the Peninsula, and how much of Gothic or of Teuton blood runs in the veins of the people of the mountains, it is more than difficult now to determine. It had been impossible, despite laws and penalties, to prevent the intermingling of the races: all that we certainly know is that the inhabitants of Galicia, Asturias, Viscaya, Navarro, and Aragon have always exhibited the characteristics of a hardy, fighting, pushing race, as distinguished from the Andaluces, the Valencianos, the Murcianos, and people of Granada, in whom the languid blood of a Southern people and the more marked trace of Arabic heritage are apparent. The Catalans would appear, again, to be descendants of the old Provencals, at one time settled on both sides of the Pyrenees...
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