Laudator Temporis Acti

Gerald Brenan (1894-1987), South from Granada (1957; rpt. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), p. 17:

Like most of the villages of the Sierra Nevada, Yegen was composed of two barrios or quarters, built at a short distance from one another. The barrio de arriba or upper quarter, which was the one in which I lived, began just below the road and ended at the church. Here there was a level space some two or three acres in extent — a break in the endless slope — which was given over to cultivation, and immediately below it the barrio de abajo, or lower quarter, began. The extraordinarily strong feelings of attachment which Spaniards have to their native place showed themselves even in the case of these barrios, for, although there was no difference in their social composition, there was a decided feeling of rivalry between them. People made their friends chiefly in the one in which they lived, and if they had to move house avoided settling in the other. Both in politics and in private quarrels the two barrios tended to take different sides. But since there were no obstacles to intermarriage, the feeling never went very deep and did not of course compare with the gulf which divided one pueblo or village from another.

Id., p. 38:

As the months passed by and I came to be better acquainted with the villlage I had chosen for my home, I was surprised to discover what a very self-contained place it was. Even our gentry were not on visiting terms with those of the neighbouring villages, which we scarcely entered except on the occasion of their yearly festivals. Of the two nearest, Válor was disliked because its people were thought to put on airs, while Mecina was laughed at because of its old-fashioned dress and customs. The only ones that we were on good terms with were those that stood at some distance off, especially when they grew different crops and some trade was done with them.

There was naturally no courting between adjacent villages. It was unthinkable that a man or girl of Yegen should marry anyone from Válor or Mecina. They might, if the opportunity occurred, marry from a remoter town or locality, though even so there were, besides the schoolmistress, only two married women living among us who had been born in other places. One of these was my landlord's wife, Doña Lucía, while the other was the doctor's wife, and they had both met their husbands while these were studying at the University of Granada. What is more, there were only two men in the village besides myself who were not 'sons of the pueblo'. These were the priest and the officially appointed secretary to the municipal council, and both of them came from villages a few miles away. It will thus be easily understood that the sense these villagers had of belonging to a closed community — a Greek polis or a primitive tribe — was very strong. Everyone felt his life bound up with that of the pueblo he had been born into — a pueblo which, through its freely elected municipal officers, governed itself.

Related post: Local Chauvinism.