KNOWN TO HISTORY

Evening Star, Issue 21320, 26 January 1933, Page 16

KNOWN TO HISTORY

CITIES OF CATALONIA Catalonia, which has just celebrated the grant of autonomous government, is certainly different from the rest of Spain, but not more so than Castile is from Navarre or Aragon from Valencia. The four cities of the province— Gerona, Barcelona, Lerida, and Tax> ragona—are all old and have therefore many historical associations. Gerona aas knocked down by the French in 1809, and its ancient walls lie about this way and that in mounds of earth that have accumulated since then. On the hillside above Lerida Caesar defeated Pompey. Tarragona was the great port of the Romans, and Barcelona, though outwardly modern enough, has, secreted in its narrow streets, several ancient buildings both ecclesiastical and social, says a writer in the ‘ Manchester Guardian.’ The peasants of tho province wear what has become known as the cap of liberty, conical-shaped and made of soft cloth, tho peak of which is folded hack over the head and used as a shade for the eyes. Hogarth has a version of such 'an one in his portrait of Wilkes, and Mr Punch wears one on his weekly appearance amongst us. It generally has a red rim. Costume in Spain is now almost as rare as in other parts of Europe, only the older people sport tho Catalan cap, and when-1 inquired of the vendor in Gerona if he sold many ho replied that the last one ho sold was to an English artist like myself. FAMOUS CATHEDRAL. Corona (pronounced Herona) lies on an inadequate river almost at its junction with tho Ter, and, besides its picturesque situation and its many ancient and dark churches, is famous for its cathedral, gaunt and vast, approached by a wide flight of steps—eighty-six, 1 think. The modern facade is a deceit, besides being coarse and vulgar ;'for the inside is very impressive, being the largest single-spanned vaulted room in Europe, 73ft wide and 105 ft high. There are no aisles. The huge buttresses are used as walls to the side chapels. It is almost twice as wide as the nave between the columns of Westminster Abbey, and is 21ft wider than the nave of*York Minster. Tho verger, who may, or may not, show you round, according to caprice, leaves you every quarter of an hour to strike the chimes on tho clock, which have to synchronise with his vast pocket onion of a watch. A DEMOCRATIC DANCE. In Barcelona is published the little newspaper called 1 Sardaua,’ under whose fostering propaganda tho movement for autonomy developed; and it was in the Plaza Cataluna in Barcelona that I first saw the regional dance of that iiame. It is not so vcx - y old—about a century—but of it shold on the people there can bo no doubt. A small band of wood-wind players sits on a trestle platform slightly raised above the crowd; and the moment their strange notes issue there seem to awaken in the people memories of ancient friendships, echoes of far away and long ago. Hand seeks hand, and the dame begins, in circles ever widening. Hats, bags, purses, sticks, or whatever impedimentathe dancer may have, arc thrown in a heap in tho centre of the ring, while the strange jigging, now to the right, now to the left, goes'on to a music born of the mountains. A little tunc, as of some distant pipe carried on an _ uncertain breeze, is caught up, amplified, sustained, and lost in the gathering storm, yet persists and emerges again, clearer and harder, swells, enlarges, is lost, but in ever-rising force penetrates the air and finally fades back into the distance. As with the music, so the dance, till all is still and normal again. Paraphernalia is reclaimed, and life in the square is resumed. To see this in a public square is to realise how binding such a thing can be, and how democratic. It is more romantic to see the ■dance in Gerona, because the mountains are so near, and the music belongs there. LERIDA. Lerida—with the accent on the first syllable—is dominated by its great cathedral church, now used as a barracks, where there are txvo stories, and you can touch the carvings on the capitals of the columns, and soldiers sleep in the upper part of the cloister. If you stand <?u the plain just to the south of tho cathedral, the place where.. Cxcsar tempted Pompey to come forth to battle, you see what look like ancient pit dumps, about the height of Edinburgh Castle. These are the solid parts of an ancient lake bed that have resisted the erosion of water, and it is upon one of these golden, sandstone cliffs that Lerida is built.l On clear days tho view from the trip stretches far away to the Pyrenees, with Montserrat and the cotton manufacturing districts of Manresa. Tarragona is also on a steep hillside crowned by a magnificent cathedral, not a barracks, but in full going order, rich and superb. Tho best view of the town is from the mole or breakwater, nearly a mile long, from tho end of which, as you turn to look, your heart is suddenly called hack to childhood, for there, stretched befoi'o you, just as in the lesson books in geography, is the illustration: “Spain is a tableland.” . . Catalonia has, besides these cities, txvo shrines or mausoleums of tho ancient rulers, one of Poblet and the other of Ripoll. Pohlct is a ruin isolated in the lands that its founders made to flourish, rich, yet desecrated, and now a place reserved for shoxv. Ripoll, a quiet little manufacturing* toxvn, has* its groat church untouched and its monuments intact.