By Pedro M. de Artiñano

GENERAL REMARKS AND ORIGINS.--Metalwork, from the
beginning, has been a sure and precise measure of Spanish culture
and of Spanish greatness: and there is nothing strange in this, for
Spain has always been pre-eminently a mineral land. The first
germs of civilization were implanted by the Phoenician and Greek
colonists, who came exclusively to trade in metals, principally silver, gold, lead,
and iron; and references to the mining of these metals may be found in the
classical writers.

In caves and the rudimentary dwelling-houses of the age in which these first
elements of civilization made their appearance, one finds dross and other
indications of the mining of the precious metals, chiefly of silver. There is,
however, the noteworthy fact that no object made of such metals has been
found among the household furniture of these dwelling places; nor are there
any scraps of the metals themselves. This indicates that during the neolithic
period the metals were worked by foreigners alone, and that they worked them
solely for export; the natives having realized their commercial value.

In spite of this, it was actually in the Cave of the Bats (Murciélagos),
belonging to the neolithic period, that the first Spanish ornament in precious
metal was discovered; a smooth gold crown, undoubtedly made from pure
metal, which appears to have been worked into a sheet of practically uniform
thickness, by being hammered upon a stone, and then trimmed with a stone
hatchet, producing a section thicker in the centre than at the edge.

Later, both the conditions of mining and the customs of the natives,
changed : plates of silver, or iron, or sometimes copper or bronze, are found
among their household goods. This shows that, in this second period, the
people either had learnt the use of metals and worked them for themselves, or
that foreign metalworkers, for the most part Phoenicians, had settled in Spain.

What the working of metals in those early ages really signified for Spain
may be gathered from the fact that whilst, throughout the rest of the world, in
Austria, Poland, Switzerland, France and elsewhere, some 4,000 burial places
belonging to the Hallstatt period have been found, in one Spanish necropolis
of this period, that of Aguilar de Anguita, no fewer than 5,000 burial places were
discovered, nearly all containing very interesting specimens of iron work.

The greater number of the objects found in cemeteries of this description,
numerous in Spain, are the weapons typical of that civilization; chiefly swords
with upturned hilts, of which the two ends are finished with a ball; but there
have also been found arrows, spears, shield bosses, and other objects then in
ordinary use, such as bits for horses, hammers, and axes. And, as a curiosity,
may be mentioned some iron hoops forming two vertical superposed arcs,
which, in the opinion of the Marquis of Cerralbo, were used by the Iberian
ladies to bear the mantle which covered their heads, and developed with time
into the comb which now supports the Spanish mantilla.

IRON.--The history of Spanish ironwork may be divided into three main
epochs: the first from prehistoric times to the end of the Visigoth monarchy;
the second including the Reconquest and the Renaissance; the third covering
the period from the War of Independence till the present time. In the first,
objects in metal are manifestly utilitarian; in the second, essentially decorative
and artistic; and in the present, they are industrial, thus losing the elegance and
charm so characteristic of the preceding period.

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