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Spanish Highways and Byways by Katharine Lee Bates ( Author )
Lemonjar
N.A
01-01-1901
Click "free sample" to read the whole book. No need to purchase. Excerpt... We were barely through the custom house, in itself the simplest and swiftest of operations, before the prophesied train of surprises began. One of our preconceived ideas went to wreck at the very outset on the industry of the Basque provinces. "The lazy Spaniard" has passed into a proverb. The round world knows his portrait—that broad sombrero, romantic cloak, and tilted cigarette. But the laborious Spaniard can no longer be ignored. Even at Biarritz we had to reckon with him, for the working population there is scarcely less Spanish than French. Everybody understands both languages as spoken, and it is a common thing to overhear animated dialogue where the talk is all Spanish on the one side and all French on the other. The war set streams of Spanish laborers flowing over the mountain bar into French territory. Young men fled from conscription, and fathers of families came under pressure of hard times. Skilled artisans, as masons and carpenters, could make in Biarritz a daily wage of five francs, the normal equivalent of five pesetas, or a dollar, while only the half of this was to be earned on their native side of the Pyrenees.
2307070410
Book
epub
4,018.75 KB
English
History General and Old World Spain
MYR 0.01
1
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