DESOLATE LANDSCAPES
TOWARDS THE END of my stay in Spain, I became so sick from my excesses in eating, drinking, and working that I put myself on a vegetarian diet and fresh-air regimen. I took long hikes through the countryside, stopping along the way to become better acquainted with the Spanish peasantry. About this time, I also developed and indulged a sudden voracious appetite for reading. I immersed myself in the works of Nietzsche, Huxley, Zola, Schopenhauer, Darwin, Voltaire, Kropotkin, and above all, Karl Marx. In books, I sought ideas. I read very little fiction. which did not satisfy me then and has not since because of its unreality. I read too much, instead, books on mathematics, biology, and history -- subjects which have continued to interest me to this day though I mainly use my leisure time to observe life itself.
As I have said, I did very little painting of any worth during my year and a half in Spain. Aside from my art study and varied reading, what I gained most from Spain was what I saw of the Spanish people and their condition.
At the beginning of the century, industrial Madrid consisted of a few small factories. The working class was small and unorganized, largely a lumpen proletariat, a proletariat in rags, lacking in any initiative for social change. Most of the common people were picaros or thieves. Having no legitimate ways of earning a living, they turned to lawless ones -- rackets and crimes -- in order to survive. They were shiftless, cunning, picturesque, sorrowful, and tragic. On the whole, nevertheless, the people of Madrid bore their life with courage. This courage did not inspire them to revolt but imbued them with an ironic acceptance of suffering. The very idioms of their slang expressed this resignation. Sympathizing with their misery, the local police treated them with corresponding understanding tolerance. It was not unusual to see a municipal policeman taking a poor wretch whom he had collared, not to the lockup, but to a tavern to buy him a drink.
In contrast to this burlesque gendarmerie was the infamous Guardia Civil, the direct successor to La Santa Hermandad, the Holy Brotherhood, military arm of the monarchy and the Inquisition. This sinister force was heir to the most sadistic Spanish traditions. It was cruel and treacherous, and was openly dedicated to the protection of the upper classes and the maintenance of their privileges and distinctions. It helped to make the social system of Spain one of the most unjust and backward in the world and shielded the darkest of religious fanaticism. To everyone who sought to bring freedom and justice to Spain the Guardia Civil was the unremitting enemy.
Its ranks were made up of the most arrogant, ignorant, and reactionary sons of Spanish upper bourgeois families. These young toughs needed no instructions to serve their class interests. They expressed open and aggressive contempt for their "inferiors," the lower middle class and, of course, the workers. Class division was, nevertheless, less distinct in Madrid than in the more industrial sections of the country: the metallurgic districts of the north; the industrial sections of the southeast; Catalonia; and the mining area around Almaden. There the Guardia Civil used its iron fist openly, as I was able to see at first hand.
I am sorry to say that the Spanish Church worked side by side with these gangsters. Priests, bishops, cardinals, monks and nuns gave an aura of sanction to their activities, spreading over the people a dark blanket of superstition and ignorance which smothered every impulse toward change. So that such rebellions as occurred were always sporadic, violent and impregnated with despair.