Spain

Labour.

The following table regarding strikes shows clearly the improvement in the industrial situation since the present Government came into power in September, 1923: Strikes The public works undertaken by the Government under the extraordinary budget have given rise to an unusual demand for road rollers, cranes, excavators, and other machinery, keeping the iron and steel industries and the cement works fully occupied. So long as the expenditure on public works of several hundred million pesetas annually continues, the prosperity of these branches of Spanish industry is assured.

It is still impossible to introduce any accurate chronology into the prehistory of Spain. Before the Roman pacification in the 2nd century B.C. with its certain dates and events lie a couple of cen turies of Punic penetration from Carthage ; still earlier we know of the coasting voyages of Greek traders along the Mediterranean shore, and catch some glimpse of the Iberian civilization with which these Greeks came into contact ; but all this brings us only into the 7th century B.C. Perhaps for several hundred years before the advent of the Greek ships there had been Phoenicians, mainly from Tyre and Sidon, who had maintained trading-posts along the southern shore of Spain and had sailed through the Gibraltar Straits to Cadiz on the Atlantic. Then the perspective of years lengthens out immeasurably and we step back, not by centuries but by thousands of years, through neolithic into palaeolithic times, when some type of men—we cannot guess what blood they were of or what form of language they knew—hunted the beasts of those early days and decorated with marvellously fine likenesses of these animals the inner walls and roofs of deep caverns.

Palaeolithic Spain.

These cave-paintings rank among our most impressive discoveries from the past. There can be no doubt of their vast antiquity, since they certainly represent animals of the late quaternary geological period and are engraved upon bones which are surely identifiable as those of animals now long extinct. Nor can there be much dispute about the extraordinary veracity and vivacity with which wild horse and bison, hind and stag, ibex and ox and boar are delineated with little save their outline and with no visible hesitation of stroke.

The best known of the Spanish caverns and one of the first to be discovered is Altamira near Santander. The publication of its contents by Cartailhac and the abbe Breuil (Monaco, r906) is the best introduction to the study of palaeolithic Spanish archae ology. Other important sites are Hornos de la Pena, Pasiega, and Castillo in the province of Santander ; Basondo in the province of Biscay; and Pindal, Buxu and La Pefia in Asturias. Palaeolithic

decorated caverns are largely confined to the small mountainous area in the north which extends from the westernmost Pyrenees through the coastal hills beyond Santander. They may therefore be justly termed Cantabrian. Elsewhere, however, beyond the Spanish border, the same type recurs, chiefly on the northern slopes of the Pyrenees and in the region of the Dordogne in south western France. These three districts—the one in northern Spain, the two others in southern France—are inseparably allied and were products of contemporary cultures. In other parts of Spain, where caves are little more than open rock-shelters, there has been found a distinctively different art.

Prehistorians therefore speak of "cave art" and "rock-shelter art," and distinguish sharply between Cantabrian and East-Spanish palaeolithic. During the last 20 years there has been great activity in the exploration and elucidation of this second group. Except that the fauna of the paintings here implies a slightly warmer climate, much the same series of animals are rendered in much the same style ; but intimately combined with them appear weirdly represented men and women—a subject almost completely neg lected by the Cantabrian cave artists. Often the men are armed with bow and arrow and shown in pursuit of their quarry; but whereas the beasts are naturalistically correct in the surprising palaeolithic manner, some of the huntsmen with threadlike limbs more nearly resemble the praying mantis, while others with sudden protuberances of calf or thigh suggest unevenly inflated rubber toys. The women, in long flounced petticoats very remotely sug gestive of the elegant ladies of Minoan Crete, seem to take part in dances and conversations, poorly visualized and crudely ren dered. This striking combination of a naturalistic animal art with geometrically conventionalized, highly primitive human represen tations is a phenomenon of great significance, since the groupings and actions of the men and women are almost as clearly allied to palaeolithic rock-drawings in north Africa as the ibexes and stags, horses and oxen and bulls are allied to the cave-paintings of Can tabria. As in historic, so in prehistoric times, the destiny of Spain must have been a succession of invasions, now from the north, pouring round or over the Pyrenees, now from the south out of Morocco and Algeria. The most important sites of the East Spanish group are Cogul by Lerida, Valltorta in Castellon, Albar racin by Teruel, Alpera and Mortaja in Albacete, and Cantos de la Visera in Murcia—all characteristically within two or three days' journey afoot from the sea.