IT was a cloudless day of November. The Cathedral of Valencia stood grey against a sky of soft blue. In the Plaza de la ConstituciÓn the sun shone on the central fountain and marked in dark lines the shadows of the houses and the Cathedral. From the great “Door of the Apostles” came a smell of incense as people went out and in. Surmounted by its large rose-window, the doorway has a worn and ancient air, and the plants growing here and there in the wall add to its look of venerable splendour. Some of the apostles stand there headless, some without arms, some mere trunks of stone. Above, the tall Miguelete tower rises conspicuous here, as it is conspicuous far and wide across the Valencian plain. A few priests passed, a few carts drawn by long strings of mules, a newspaper-seller cried the Heraldo de Madrid, and some peasants in black or blue-grey groups talked together, leaning on their sticks. Shortly after eleven a long, green sofa was set up on the pavement immediately in front of the Cathedral door, and a narrow space round it was enclosed with an iron railing. Sofa and railing, carried across the street in sections, bore the inscription Tribunal de las Aguas. For it was Thursday, the meeting-day of the tribunal which judges disputes arising from the irrigation of the Huerta.

To the peasant of the Valencian Huerta loss of water for his land means starvation, and the hours at which each is allowed to draw off water from the narrow channels that cross his land are carefully regulated. If one takes water out of his turn the fields of another must suffer, and the case must be brought before the judges sitting in weekly council. Against their sentence there is no protest or appeal; it is absolutely final, and though there must be cases of injustice, the peasants are very proud of their tribunal. There is no writing—the cases are not even recorded—the matter is decided on the spot and in the open air between man and man; there are no clerks or advocates; no table, ink, or papers to confuse the simple;[90] no fees or anxious delays, and the judges, moreover, chosen by and from the peasants themselves, thoroughly understand the questions brought before them. It is a strange sight, the sitting of this all-powerful institution, centuries old, in the Plaza de la ConstituciÓn, in the twentieth century. There is a dignified simplicity about it, a lack of display which is imposing. The peasants have a conscious pride in being able to arrange their own affairs without interference of the men of learning, just as they are ready to settle their more private quarrels without recourse to the law. The man who has been stabbed in a quarrel will conceal the name of his assailant from the police, always reserving for himself the pleasure of taking vengeance later on. The character of the peasants of the Huerta is indeed a mixture of haughtiness and cunning, of simplicity and shrewdness, and the word that best describes them is the Spanish socarronerÍa—a certain malicious humour.[91] Living isolated in the vast open plain, they form a community apart, and resent external interference. Their tribunal is entirely primitive and rustic; in all its years of city life it has adopted none of the city’s ways, and has not even the shelter of a roof.

In the present instance there was but a single question to be settled, and the proceedings lasted less than five minutes, passing all but unnoticed. At about a quarter to twelve the judges, five in number, and dressed in black as ordinary peasants, walked slowly into the enclosure and occupied their places on the official sofa, taking off their black felt hats. The full body of the judges is seven, chosen from different districts to represent the principal canals of irrigation. Another peasant, officer of the tribunal (on his cap is written A. de T. Aguas, the alguacil, that is, of the Tribunal of Waters), standing at the small gate in the railing, formally declared the tribunal open: S’obri el tribunal are the consecrated words. He then introduced the plaintiff and defendant, who stood bareheaded and without their sticks at half a yard’s distance from the judges. After each had stated his case—and any interruption is rigorously fined—one of the judges at once passed sentence. The verdict was against the old man, and he turned without a word to leave the enclosure. His wife, however, without the railing, though he put his finger to his lips to silence her, was not to be overawed, and in a shrill torrent of words reproached the judges as they filed solemnly into the Plaza. The Tribunal de las Aguas was closed; the judges dispersed to their silent fields, to meet again in the rattle and clamour of the crowded city on the following Thursday. Every Thursday throughout the year the plain green sofa and circular railing are brought out in sections, and the judges make their appearance in the Plaza. They do not always enter the enclosure, for sometimes there is no dispute pending, or the disputants have come to an agreement in the Plaza without recourse to the tribunal, and when the clock strikes twelve, railing and sofa are carried back. The judges help to bring about a settlement, and this perhaps explains that their official verdicts are given instantaneously, with no pause for thought or consultation; they have no doubt heard every detail of the case and come to a decision beforehand.

Readers of Don Vicente Blasco IbÁÑez’ gloomy but delightful novel, “La Barraca,” will remember the scene at the “Door of the Apostles” when Batiste, unable to check his indignation at the unjust charge brought against him, is fined for his excited interruptions and fined too for the misdeed which he had not committed. But as a rule the scene is a quiet and almost a solemn one. The tribunal has the sanctity of years; the peasant respects an institution which was the same in his father’s time and in his grandfather’s, and in that of his ancestors five centuries ago. The judges who before and after are simple peasants, are, for the moment invested with the power of settling matters of vital importance; for disregarding the sentence of the tribunal they may deprive a man entirely of his right of water, and so render him and his family penniless. They represent the whole Huerta, embodying alike its independent spirit and its conservative traditions. A few minutes after the judges have risen, and sometimes before the Cathedral clock has struck twelve, sofa and railing have disappeared, and it is hard to realize that the time-honoured Judging of the Waters, so primitive and impressive, has actually been held in this city of two hundred thousand inhabitants, and in this paved square where now there are but few wayfarers, and the central fountain flows and trickles in silence.