1936 On the Continent

promenade, and you can stay at any of them at less than 10s. per day, all found. A brief calculation will tell you that you can stay at Alicante for a whole month on £25, allowing
£
2 per week for all extras, including short excursions.
Pocket Money
    Let me digress here for a moment to deal with the question of “extras.” It is, of course, impossible to generalise on the subject, for the amount of pocket money one spends is a purely individual matter. But it is safe to say that, on the whole, you will not spend more on extras while on holiday in Spain than you do at home in your everyday life. You must remember that every peseta in Spain purchases the equivalent of 1s, at home, and—at the present rate of exchange—there are 37 pesetas to
£
1. Smokes, including the very good Spanish cigars, are quite cheap. Fares within the towns do not amount to much, as, apart from Madrid, Barcelona and a very few other cities, the distances are small and the visitor generally prefers to walk. Shoe polishing—which is done in the street—is a daily item, but accounts only for 3d. or 4d. per day. At cafés you can sit for hours for the price of a cup of chocolate or coffee, while theatres, cinemas, bull-fights, etc., will cost you as much or as little as you choose. Ices and cold drinks are a biggish item on account of frequency rather than the price of these items. Wines, of course, are cheap everywhere in Spain and you can get a quart bottle of fairly good wine for the equivalent of a shilling.
    Guides you can obtain for 5 pesetas, or about 3s. a time, but you will not need them except in a very few places, such as Granada, Madrid and, perhaps, Barcelona. There remain the beggars, but here you must be firm. If youlearn the technique of shaking them off they will cost you nothing.
    In the matter of tips you will find that the Spanish are not so greedy as serving staffs in some other countries, and beyond the 10 per cent. or so clapped on to your hotel bill you are free to give as many or as few tips as you like.
    To return to Alicante, you can make many short trips from here, by motor-bus as well as by train and steamer, and the
P. N. T.
, in the Ayuntamiento, will advise you according to the season. If you happen to be there in the middle of August—which is really too hot for Alicante—you may take a trip to Elche on the 15th by one of the four daily buses to and fro. On that day the famous “Mystery of Elche” is performed in the church of Santa Maria. The mystery is a musical drama on the Assumption of the Virgin, and the whole is performed exactly as it was in the sixteenth century.
    By the way, Elche itself can be one of the most thrilling experiences in your visit to Spain. It is a small town surrounded on three sides by a forest of palms and looks for all the world like a bit of Africa transplanted across the Mediterranean.
Seville
    But Alicante is one of those places that you may omit from your itinerary. Seville, on the other hand, is a city that you must on no account miss, for it is more Spanish than practically all the rest of Spain. It is not the place “where the best barbers come from,” as an old schoolboy howler has it. The Spanish say
Quien no ha visto Sevilla no ha visto maravilla
(He who has not seen Seville has not seen a miracle). In my humble opinion the less you
look
in Seville the more you see, or rather feel.
    It is here that you first begin to wonder whether you ought not, after all, to invest in a
sombrero
and a guitar. In other big cities in Spain the mantilla and the tall comb are, alas, giving way to more modern wear; but in Seville they are still quite common, and so are the grace and dignity associated with them. The whole atmosphere is essentially Spanish, lazy, romantic, light-hearted, with little trace of the “progress” of the last few years. This is
the
city of bull-fights and carnivals. The
Feria
, whichtakes place on April 18th and 20th, is a riot of colour and gay abandon. Dancing all day and all night, rivers of red wine (but no drunks!), bloody bull-fights, a mushroom town on the Prado de San Sebastian, and romance, romance, romance. It will carry you away, and when you look into the sparkling eyes of the Sevillan señoritas you will surely regret that you did not swot up a little more Spanish when you had the chance.
    Seville is a biggish city with more than 200,000 inhabitants, but not too big to spend your time strolling round with your hands in your pockets—a