Free Spain by Jan Morris Page A

organic ease. The ornamental bridges that cross the moat-like River Turia at Valencia form a delectably graceful corona for that rather lumpish city. The celebrated bridge across the Tajo ravine at Ronda, which has a restaurant in the former prison cell above its central arch, is one of the most spectacular sights in all Spain: below it the gorge plunges a sheer five hundred feet, and deep down there in the shadows, as you sip your coffee high above, the river bubbles most disturbingly.
    The bridges of Spain play a significant part in the history and folklore of the country. It was upon the slightly wiggly old bridge over the Orbigo at Veguellina, in León, that a famous tournament was held in 1434—precisely the kind of event that Cervantes was mocking in Don Quixote . A preposterous knight-errant, wearing an iron chain around his neck as token of his love-enslavement, stood upon the bridge with nine colleagues and challenged every passing unfortunate to deny that his lady was the most beautiful on earth. Seven hundred and twenty-seven passers-by were silly enough to contest this proposition, all of them were instantly engaged in combat, several were badly hurt,and one actually died. The castellated bridge of San Martín at Toledo is the subject of another famous story. Almost at the moment of its completion, we are told, its designer confided to his wife the awful truth that he had made some errors in his calculations, and that as soon as the scaffolding was taken away it would almost certainly collapse. The resourceful lady saved her husband’s reputation by stealing out that very night and setting fire to the thing, thus enabling the engineer to start all over again from scratch, and build his span so stoutly that it is still as good as new. Spain is a paradise for the lover of bridges: even now they are building them all over the place, and one of the more tantalizing things in the peninsula is the presence near Zamora of the Cabriles railway viaduct, for many years the largest concrete span on earth, but so inaccessible that to have a good look at it you must either row for several miles across a reservoir, or pull the communication cord of your passing express.
    As with bridges so with churches—the same pleasures of strength and purpose, whether they are gracing a corner of some great city or dominating the whole being of a tumbled hamlet of the steppe. In their combination of form and faith they really do express, more than most churches, the conception of God as the master-scaffolder. The Spanish church-builders never much liked airiness or fuss, except in decoration: the quality that most of their best works share is one of devout muscularity.
    For many people the most satisfying of them all are the ancient churches of the north, some the unique products of the Visigothic kingdoms, some Romanesque—the latter reflecting in their severe and sinewy simplicity the spirit of Romanesque that ran clean across southern Europe, and the influence of the Cluny Benedictines who brought to Spain their own brand of ordered and efficient Christianity. There are several famous pre-Romanesque buildings—notably the two robust little churches, all on their own on a hillside, which stand so silent and deserted on the road above Oviedo, looking down like cowled monks themselves upon the industrial tumult of the city below. And there is nothing more powerful than Spanish Romanesque, when you encounter it not in the shape of a great cathedral, Zamora, Santiago, or Lugo, butin some damp green-enfolded hamlet of Cantabria—all flowers and freshness in the spring, all gentle drizzle in the winter. You bounce up a bumpy lane to get there, perhaps, with high banks to obscure your vision, and when at last you reach the village, so bold upon the signpost at the road junction, it turns out to be only a cluster of two or three small houses, deep in the fields. Proudly on the hill above it, hardly bigger than a house