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Updated: June 11, 2025
As you motor into the town, the long rows of great cottonwoods and poplars attest the great age of the place. Through windows deep set in adobe casement and flush with the street, you catch glimpses of inner patios where oleanders and roses are still in bloom.
Nearly four hundred years did the Arabs remain in their beloved Tolaitola; the traces of their occupancy are everywhere visible: in the streets and in the patios, in fanciful arabesques, and above all in Santa Maria la Blanca. The Spaniards returned and brought Christianity back with them. They erected an immense cathedral and turned mosques into chapels without altering the Oriental form.
When the moon comes over the mountain wall new-washed from the sea, and the shadows lie like lace on the stamped floors of the patios, from recess to recess of the vine tangle runs the thrum of guitars and the voice of singing.
All appeared to be living in that golden mean equally removed from the wants and superfluities of life, and all to be happily interwoven by kind and cordial habits of intimacy. We found the females of the family generally seated in the patios, or central courts of their dwellings, beneath the shade of awnings and among shrubs and flowers.
There is no sewerage, except for surface water and sinks, while vaults are in every house and occupy whatever remaining space there may be in the patios not taken up by the cisterns. The risk of contaminating the water is very great, and in dry seasons the supply is entirely exhausted. Epidemics are frequent, and the town is alive with vermin, fleas, cockroaches, mosquitoes, and dogs.
"We need not inquire who will send her back. But she will come. She will not expect to see you. Remember that and do not frighten her." So Marcos set out at dusk to await Juanita. The entrance to the two patios that give entrance to the Cathedral cloister is immediately opposite to the door of the school of the Sisters of the True Faith.
In any case, throughout the length and breadth of Spain, outside the wayside venta, or the barber's shop, in the patios of inns, or wherever holiday-makers congregate, there is the musician twanging his guitar, there are the dancers twirling about in obvious enjoyment to the accompaniment of the stamping, clapping, and encouraging cries of the onlookers, and the graceful little verse, with its probably weird and plaintive cadence: Era tan dichoso antes De encontrarte en mi camino!
I was fearful of not getting within this outward armouring, but gradually as we talked and Harriet poured him a third cup of hot coffee he dropped into a more familiar tone. He told with some sprightliness of having seen threshings in Mexico, how the grain was beaten out with flails in the patios, and afterwards thrown up in the wind to winnow out.
How can he forget Moorish hospitality, so lavishly exercised in patios where the hands of architect and gardener meet those delightful gatherings of friends whose surroundings are recalled when he sees, even in the world of the West Groups under the dreaming garden trees, And the full moon, and the white evening star.
Outwardly the long vista of bare house fronts that toe them on either side are dreary and poor, every window barred as those of a prison. Yet in them sat well-dressed senoritas waiting for the lovers who "play the bear" to late hours of the night, and over their shoulders the passerby caught many a glimpse of richly furnished rooms and flowery patios beyond.
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