But you will never see a bull-fight you can enjoy as I do these
visionary festivals, where memory is the corregidor, and where the only
spectators are the stars and I."
RED-LETTER DAYS
No people embrace more readily than the Spaniards the opportunity of
spending a day without work. Their frequent holidays are a relic of the
days when the Church stood between the people and their taskmasters, and
fastened more firmly its hold upon the hearts of the ignorant and
overworked masses, by becoming at once the fountain of salvation in the
next world, and of rest in this. The government rather encouraged this
growth of play-days, as the Italian Bourbons used to foster mendicancy,
by way of keeping the people as unthrifty as possible. Lazzaroni are so
much more easily managed than burghers!
It is only the holy days that are successfully celebrated in Spain. The
state has tried of late years to consecrate to idle parade a few
revolutionary dates, but they have no vigorous national life. They grow
feebler and more colorless year by year, because they have no depth of
earth.
The most considerable of these national festivals is the 2d of May,
which commemorates the slaughter of patriots in the streets of Madrid by
Murat. This is a political holiday which appeals more strongly to the
national character of the Spaniards than any other. The mingled pride of
race and ignorant hate of everything foreign which constitutes that
singular passion called Spanish patriotism, or Espanolismo, is fully
called into play by the recollections of the terrible scenes of their
war of independence, which drove out a foreign king, and brought back
into Spain a native despot infinitely meaner and more injurious.
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