The soul of Spain / by Havelock Ellis.

  • Havelock Ellis
Date:
1908
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The soul of Spain / by Havelock Ellis. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    51/446 page 33
    pelled to proceed farther and found a congenial home among the hills of Asturias and Galicia, for everywhere these reserved and dreamy people are attracted to the seclusion of hilly country; their descendants extend along the Portuguese coast, and it may be said that the Celts have had less to do with the making of Spain than of Portugal, to which indeed Galicia really belongs, by soil and climate, as well as by race and language. Along the northern Spanish heights Celts and Iberians seem to have mingled at a very early period to form the vigorous and obstinate Celtiberian stock. The Celts brought, however, no very positive contribution to the Spanish character; they doubtless heightened the Spanish tenacity and domesticity, and prob- ably diminished Spanish pugnacity, for crimes of blood are comparatively infrequent in the Celtic regions of Spain ;1 they were certainly more apt for menial labour ; even to-day the Gallegos in Spain, like the Auvergnats in France, are known all over the country as labourers and servants. Partly owing to the predominance of the primitive Iberian elements, partly to the racial affinity of most of the elements of later introduc- tion, the population of Spain reveals to-day a singular anthropological uniformity.2 It is quite 1 Bernaldo de Quiros, Criminologia, p. 52. 2 A similar uniformity seems to have prevailed even at the outset. In a fragment of the old Greek historian, Herodorus of Heraclsea, it is said that the Iberians are everywhere the same people, though they D
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