CURRENT LITERATURE
I SAW SPAIN By Bernard Newmah
Mr. Newman here describes Spain as lie saw it a few months before the
revolution. On his much-travelled bicycle " George " he rode from the Pyrenees across the central plateau to Gibraltar and made a trip into Spanish Morocco. I Saw Spain (Jenkins, ms. 6d.) gives the impression of having been rather hurriedly compiled to catch, the market for books about pre-revolu- tion Spain, and some of his references to signs of the war to come seem as if they have been written in the light of subse- quent events. And his version •of remarks made to him in Spanish have a literary eloquence that is sometimes most unconvincing, as when a gypsy woman's warning is recorded thus : "We, who move in strange places, see strange things. We, who move quietly_ and by night, meet other people who move quietly and by night. We hear strange whispers : we know something of the hearts of men—often we know more of them than they know them- selves. There are many black hearts in Spain today." His book is chiefly valuable for its description of those little-known, isolated villages and small towns of Asturias, Leon and Estrez- madura where Spanish life is at its grimmest, and which have seldom been noticed by tourists—or anybody else.
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