ly that takes up land which has lain vacant for years under the
curse of the community, since the eviction of the tenants, who had held
it for generations, by a landlord who was murdered as a result, on a
lonely road by the father of the family he had turned out. The struggle
of these peasants against their neighbours is told with a good deal of
feeling, and the culmination in a rifle fight in an irrigation ditch is
a splendid bit of blood and thunder. There are many descriptions of
local customs, such as the Tribunal of Water that sits once a week
under one of the portals of Valencia cathedral to settle conflicts of
irrigation rights, a little dragged in by the heels, to be sure, but
still worth reading. Yet even in these early novels one feels over and
over again the force of that phrase "popular vulgarization." Valencia
is being vulgarized for the benefit of the universe. The proletariat is
being vulgarized for the benefit of the people who buy novels.

From Valencia raids seem to have been made on other parts of Spain.
_Sonnica la Cortesana_ gives you antique Saguntum and the usual "Aves,"
wreaths, flute-players and other claptrap of costume novels. In _La
Catedral_ you have Toledo, the church, socialism and the modern world
in the shadow of Gothic spires. _La Bodega_ takes you into the genial
air of the wine vaults of Jerez-de-la-Frontera, with smugglers,
processions blessing the vineyards and agrarian revolt in the
background. Up to now they have been Spanish novels written for
Spaniards; it is only with _Sangre y Arena_ that the virus of a
European reputation shows results.

In _Sangre y Arena_, to be sure, you learn that _toreros_ use scent,
have a home life, and are seduced by passionate Baudelairian ladies of
the smart set who plant white teeth in their brown sinewy arms and
teach them to smoke opium cigarettes. You see _toreros_ taking the
sacraments before going into the ring and you see them tossed by the
bull while the crowd, which a moment before had been crying "hola" as
if it didn't know that something was going wrong, gets very pale and
chilly and begins to think what dreadful things _corridas_ are anyway,
until the arrival of the next bull makes them forget it. All of which
is good fun when not obscured by grand, vague ideas, and incidentally
sells like hot cakes. Thenceforward the Casa Prometeo becomes an
exporting house dealing in the good Spanish products of violence and
sunshine, blood, voluptuou