The Bible in Spain, Vol. 1 [of 2] Or, the Journeys, Adventures, and Imprisonments of an Englishman in an Attempt to Circulate the Scriptures in the Peninsula — Story, Setting & Ideas

A Missionary Adrift in a Land of Orators

Borrow's account of his arrival in Cadiz reveals a pattern that recurs throughout the volume: he moves between social extremes within a single day. At the French hotel, he is allotted a 'species of cockloft, or garret' in a house crowded with guests. In the coffee-houses, he finds 'the din of tongues in all was deafening' and is accosted by orators demanding his opinion on English and French intervention. When asked, he replies with a dry deflation: 'it would be as well if the Spaniards would exert themselves more, and call less on Jupiter.' This wry remark—part diplomacy, part provocation—typifies Borrow's narrative voice. He then quits the political arena and seeks out 'those parts of the town where the lower classes principally reside,' only to find them 'very ignorant; none could read or write.' The juxtaposition is deliberate: the coffee-house bluster and the illiterate populace are two faces of a Spain Borrow must navigate.

The River as Witness: History and the Present Moment

Borrow's journey up the Guadalquivir aboard the steamer Betis is described with a mixture of physical detail and historical meditation. The river's banks are 'low and destitute of trees,' the water 'turbid and muddy, and in colour closely resembling the contents of a duck-pool.' Yet this unremarkable waterway has 'borne the Roman, the Vandal, and the Arab' and been 'the witness of deeds which have resounded through the world.' Borrow's eye is simultaneously on the present—the mist, the dull stupor, the sudden burst of Spanish sun—and on the layers of past conquest. This double vision is central to his method: he records what he sees with a reporter's precision while constantly measuring it against the 'old renown' of Spain. The river passage also exemplifies his structural habit of moving from a cramped, enclosed space (the steamer deck, the fog) to an expansive, illuminated vista, mirroring his own shifts between confinement and release.

Print, Ignorance, and the Obstacles to Circulation

Borrow's encounter with a Cadiz bookseller crystallizes the practical difficulties of his mission. He produces a London edition of the New Testament in Spanish, with 'both the type and paper exceedingly beautiful,' but the bookseller dismisses it as 'a work not sought after and very little known.' Borrow immediately recognizes the bias: a bookseller with no financial interest in the volume would hardly endorse it. Yet the exchange reveals a deeper problem—the very people Borrow hopes to reach cannot read. The lower classes he spoke with earlier were illiterate, and their 'ideas respecting religion were anything but satisfactory—most professing a perfect indifference.' The gap between the beautifully printed book and the indifferent, unlettered populace is the central irony of Borrow's enterprise. He does not resolve it here; instead, he notes that he had only 'two or three copies' with him anyway. The passage quietly underscores the tension between the Society's ambition and the on-the-ground reality of a country where print culture barely touches the majority.

Readers should attend to Borrow's shifting registers: the picaresque humor, the ethnographic eye, the evangelical earnestness, and the historian's backward glance. These voices do not always harmonize, and the friction between them is the book's real subject. The narrative proceeds by juxtaposition—coffee-house orators and illiterate peasants, muddy rivers and ancient empires, beautiful books and indifferent readers. Borrow's Spain is a country of contrasts that resist synthesis, and his account is richest when it lets those contrasts stand without forcing resolution.

There’s something about Borrow’s Spain—the dusty roads, the stubborn hopefulness of handing out Bibles to people who mostly just want to talk—that feels like a long afternoon conversation. It reminded me, strangely, of the gentler bewilderment of a young traveler in another old city. I found myself thinking of Rollo in Paris — Context and Discussion, where curiosity wears a quieter, more patient face. Both books share that odd, tender ache of being a stranger who means well.