WOMEN OF SPAIN

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLVIII, Issue 3620, 31 March 1927, Page 4

WOMEN OF SPAIN

MOTOR CARS BEFORE DRESS. SECLUDED LIVES. The money an English or French woman would spend on her dress or her house in Spain goes towards her ear (says “S.V.” in the Manchester Guardian). The average Spanish woman takes comparatively little interest in clothes. ’ She dresses for the most part in black and wears a lace scarf in place of a hat when she is not wearing a proper mantilla, and wonderful embroidered shawls that have ■been in the family for generations do away with the necessity for elaborate evening dresses. Her car she regards as the most important part of her toilette, not a mere means of transport. It is only natural, therefore, that its elegant paintwork should be carefully preserved so as to appear at its best when about 5 o’clock she drives slowly round and round the streets for an hour or two. One must know the Spanish woman to realise quite how much this drive means. It is difficult for foreigners to realise how secluded a life she leads. (She rarely appears in public, and when she does go to a bullfight. or the opera, or perhaps, if she be very modern, to the golf or tennis club, she is always carefully guarded by her menfolk. If her husband has foreign friends h centertains them at a restaurant, and not at his home. She could not walk through the streets, even at 10 o’clock in the morning, without causing remark, so she stops at home. It follows that the life of the average better class Spanish woman is extremely restricted, and the afternoon drive is her one expedition into the world outside. As a rule, men’s and women’s lives are quite separate in Spain. You never see any family parties out on a day’s excursion, and women hardly ever accompany the men to the cafes and restaurants where they spend their evenings. Both sexes seem to think that putting on their best clothes and driving slowly round the town in a shimmering motor car is the ideal way of spending a Saturday afternoon.