The Spanish Craze by Kagan Richard L.;

Author:Kagan, Richard L.; [Kagan, Richard L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HIS036030 History / United States / Revolutionary Period (1775-1800), HIS036040 History / United States / 19th Century, HIS036060 History / United States / 20th Century
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press

Ronda—A Spanish Song

Hearst is not known for his poetry, but at some point, possibly sometime after Spain’s Second Republic government came to power in 1931, he composed an ode. Actually he called it a song that was dedicated to Ronda, Hearst’s favorite Spanish town and one whose architecture had inspired the design for San Simeon and, along with it, his acquisition of countless treasures from Spain. “Ronda—A Spanish Song” recalled the “rapturous hours” Hearst had spent in Ronda’s Fonda de Cádiz, evidently the inn where he stayed in 1905. According to Baedeker’s Handbook for Travellers to Spain and Portugal, the only fonda then listed for Ronda was the Fonda Rodeña, a pensión described as “unpretending” but that offered wine at a modest price. Over the years Hearst might have easily forgotten the inn’s exact name, but the Fonda de Cádiz described in the poem appears to have been the product of Hearst’s imagination, the way he wanted to remember Ronda, and Spain, as it is nothing less than a paean to the fonda’s wonderful cuisine:

Did you ever have breakfast

at Ronda, In the fonda De Cadiz?

Did you ever have coffee, more creamy, Hot and steamy?

You’re a practiced and persistent eater

Did you ever taste ham that was sweeter,

Or bread that is whiter, Or rolls that are lighter

Than those that they serve you at Ronda,

At the fonda De Cadiz.142

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