Ciudad Real

“ Would you have such an angel throw flowers at me, or appoint a rendezvous? When the carriage turned out of the street towards the Prado, she looked back. Holy Mother of Sorrows! even at that distance, the sunshine of those eyes scorched my very heart!—But this is folly, sheer folly! Next week I go to Ciudad Real, and amongst dusty deeds and dry folios I shall soon forget eyes and their owner. ”

“ Pragmáticas del Reyno, fol. 24, 30, 39.—Recop. de las Leyes, (ed. 1640,) tom. i. lib. 2, tit. 5, leyes 1, 2, 3, 11, 12, 20; tit. 7, ley 1.— Ordenanças Reales, lib. 2. tit. 4. The southern chancery, first opened at Ciudad Real, in 1494, was subsequently transferred by the sovereigns to Granada. ”

“ It thus comprises portions of the modern provinces of Toledo, Albacete and Cuenca, and the greater part of Ciudad Real. Down to the 16th century the eastern portion was known as La Mancha de Montearagon or de Aragon, and the western simply as La Mancha; afterwards the north-eastern and south-western sections respectively were distinguished by the epithets Alta and Baja (upper and lower) . La Mancha is famous as the scene of Cervantes’ novel Don Quixote; in appearance, with its multitude of windmills and vast tracts of arid land, it remains almost exactly as Cervantes described it. ”

“ Perhaps the best example of a square in the whole of the country is the Plaza Mayor. A lofty colonnade runs around the four sides and every evening the beauties and others of Salamanca make it their promenade. The men stroll round in one direction and the women in the opposite. The social life of a Spanish town passed in view before me, with all its fan and language of the eyes, as I sat at one of the small tables of a café and got this cheap and harmless entertainment for one real. ”

“ Street upon street of houses, white stucco or red brick, adorned with pilaster and pediment and cornice, covered with tall pantiled roofs; many bearing the dates of their birth-years two or three centuries ago; these give the capital an old-world, most attractive look, a picturesqueness that is sternly denied to most so modern towns. Steeples of character to match, frequently tower above the roofs, while very constant parks and squares, long avenues of broad-leafed trees and cool-looking fountains, some of them real works of art, do much to make this town a very delightful place. ”

“ Should you chance to stumble on the Plaza Mayor,—called Plaza de San Francisco,—you are at once rewarded by the view of the ayuntamiento, one of the most elegant edifices in Spain: otherwise the extreme simplicity of the bare, irregular, but monotonous white houses, will create disappointment—you will stare about in the vain search of the magnificence, so much extolled, of this semi-Moorish capital, and discover, that nothing can be plainer, more simple, more ugly, than the exterior of the Seville habitations. ”

“ A suburb of vast proportions, almost another city, extends toward the north, and on every side new houses break the old enclosure, spread over the fields, even to the foot of the hills, range themselves in endless rows until they reach the neighboring villages, and on all the circling hills rise villas and palaces and factories, which dispute the land and crowd each other as they rise even higher and higher, forming a noble coronet about the brow of the city. Everywhere they are creating, transforming, renewing; the people work and prosper, and Barcelona flourishes. ”

“ Beyond this wall is the real city, mostly of natives, with its own peculiar spirit and fascination. They always come back, it is said, when people go away. Here in the narrow 30streets, plazas, churches, even stores, and on the old sea wall, a spell is woven over those who linger, which has alluring power. The Plaza Independencia, three blocks from the wall, is the heart of the city, a charming place, with the Cathedral on the west, the Central Hotel east, the Bishop’s Palace north, and the Municipal Building and the French Administration Building on the south. ”

“ A large plaza forms the conventional centre, around which are grouped various religious edifices, the government house, town hall, national college, the old “ royal mint ” dating from 1585, and the treasury. The city has a massive, plain cathedral, which in part dates from early colonial times, and in part from the closing years of Spanish rule. The water supply is derived from a costly system, of reservoirs and aqueducts constructed by the Spanish government during the years of the city's greatest prosperity. ”

“ There are many spacious squares, an old palace, houses in ruins, empty convents, long streets grass-grown and deserted; in short, all the appearances of a great city fallen into decay. The most beautiful part is the Plaza Mayor, a vast arena, encircled all around by a portico supported by heavy columns of bluish granite, behind which rise houses, all three stories in height. ”

“ The new parts of the capital, with their broad streets and squares, and their villas sometimes surrounded with gardens, their boulevards lined by rather stunted trees, and their modern public buildings, all resemble the similar features of other European capitals, and contrast with the old Madrid that has preserved so many of its traits in architecture, popular life and habits. Some of the streets have been slightly widened, and in many thoroughfares new houses are being built among the ugly, irregular dwelling-places of the 18th and earlier centuries. ”

“ If you would escape from the lighted streets and be alone, you may slip down a narrow alley and find yourself in an old-world thoroughfare, whose only light comes from some open doorway, or the stars in the ragged line of gables which open to the sky. If it is near the time of full moon you may wander on—and you will abruptly reach the cathedral, and see above you the square twin towers and the gilded spires. Again you are back at that wonderful creation which for centuries has been the pride and glory of Galicia. ”

“ Until recent years the Spanish house in town and country was bare and unlovely on the outside; its beauty and richness were confined to the interior surroundings of the patio; where, in feudal privacy, the family secluded itself. To-day, in the new era of civic pride and the freer association of society in the modern boulevard and café life, the adornment is extended to the outside, and the effort made, by the addition of pinnacles and towers and much delicate tinting, to add to the attractiveness of the “city beautiful.” ”

“ A great town, set on its rough and elevated rock of granite in the midst of the blue Sierra, closely ringed by the deep brown water of the Tajo, it is like no other city in the world. The national character, strong and aloof, passionate and brilliant, and the nation’s history, are here epitomized before you. And coming to the city, as the stranger does, from Madrid, blatant, noisy, and modern, you will feel transplanted back into an older world. ”

“ The architecture and adornments of the city, the culture, education and manners of the inhabitants, their inborn courtesy and generous instincts combine to explain the admiration which all who visit the city never fail to entertain and express. The cosmopolitan character of the population, the palatial residences—the broad and spacious avenues, museums, libraries, art galleries and other unmistakable signs of the high degree of culture of the citizens, fully justify the description of Buenos Aires as the Paris of the western hemisphere. ”

“ It is Spanish throughout, and contains few modern buildings of any importance. The atmosphere of bygone centuries hangs over it; time and the elements have imparted a richness to its walls that constitutes its only charm. It is like an old painting by a master hand, mellow and sedate. In the joints and cracks of its discoloured walls, creepers, weeds, and mosses find root-hold and nourishment. The buttresses, bastions, battlements, and sentry towers that strengthen and equip the ramparts, all give evidence of the important part the city was designed to play in the colonial system of Spain. ”

“ This city is the most marvellous place that I have seen in all my travels, though much of it is hidden in bush, for wherever the traveller wanders there he finds vast palaces of marble, carven within and without, and sculptured teocallis and the huge images of grinning gods. Often have I wondered what nation was strong enough to build such a capital, and who were the kings that dwelt in it. ”

“ The portico is supported by massive granite columns of a bluish tinge, each a monolith. On the north side is the ungraceful Ayuntamiento (Town Hall) , with weather-vanes on its towers and martial trophies surmounting the town clock. The space is as lively and gay as any in Spain. The sun shines brightly, the birds fly as freely overhead as across the innocent plains; here there is no deeper shadow than elsewhere, no abiding gloom or ghostly chill. ”

“ That great City is, like some of the capitals of Europe, built on a broad river, with the mass of the metropolis on the one bank, but a wide-spreading suburb on the other. As the Trastevere is to Rome, as Southwark to London, so is earth to heaven, the bit of the city on the other side the bridge. ”

“ The new capital is about a six-hours’ railway journey from Rio, and is laid out on an ambitious scale on a beautiful site surrounded by gently rising hills with broad avenues and streets, parks and gardens, Senate Houses, Government buildings, a splendid presidential palace, a fine theatre, hospitals, schools, and every possible requirement for a prosperous and flourishing city. Rows of trees line the broad avenues. Houses, mostly of one story, await the population that has not yet arrived to occupy all the vast accommodation that has been provided. ”

“ Day, who gives us a very full and exhaustive account of all the social surroundings of the ‘Empire City,’ with its huge Babel-like hotels, its swarm of restaurants and eating-houses, necessary to a people who live out of their own homes, and its varied modes of locomotion, likens this huge hive to ‘a combination of London, Berlin, and Paris.’ The city is laid out in parallelograms, and the streets are numerically named. The practice—widely prevalent—of hanging out clothes to dry on the house-tops must be sadly detrimental to the appearance of respectable neighbourhoods. ”

“ La Granja has led me far afield. It does not stand for Spain's best, an artificial, foreign creation where passed hours of the nation's abasement. Segovia is the real Spain. Descend from the Alcázar to the river, cross the bridge, mount to the ten-sided chapel of the Knights Templars, and sitting on the steps of the granite cross, look back on the stretching city. There lies the Spain whose fiber is capable of regeneration: generous, patient, indomitable, faulty, but with manly faults, untouched by taint of luxury and greed, with blood in her veins, and ideals in her soul. ”

“ Around the place itself stretches a vast number of Spanish mansions, with the usual charmingly 'escalloped' roof, all resting on a prolonged colonnade or piazza, strange, old-fashioned, and original, running round to a vast extent, which the sensible town has decreed is never to be interfered with. A more pleasing, refreshing, and novel collection of objects for the ordinary traveller of artistic taste to see without trouble or expense, it would be impossible to conceive. ”

“ The government edifices, large retail shops and most of the fine urban residences are in the ciudad nueva, while most of the urban industries, the railway stations and the dwellings of the poorer classes are in the ciudad novísima. ”

“ The new Customs House and Oficina de Correos (Post Office) , palatial piles, stand out seaward on the plain, far away from the green-shuttered, down-at-heel, ramshackle hovel-town, as if ashamed of it all. What you do feel is that when the confinement is satisfactorily completed, Vera Cruz will be a great city. To-day she is still building-enterprise plus a plaza. Every Spanish-American town is a town with a plaza: Vera Cruz is a plaza with a town. We will get there in a minute, but meantime there are ropes being thrown from our liner to the quaint yellow-faced Mexicans on the quay ”

“ This, however, was a full-grown town, and its area might readily hold three hundred thousand inhabitants or more, were its streets and houses close packed like those of Brussels or Paris. But the number of citizens does not, in fact, exceed twenty or twenty-two thousand, thanks to the many large gardens, open spaces, and even plantations, included within the outer walls, while the immense palace of the monarch alone, with its pleasure-grounds annexed, occupies about one-tenth of the entire city. ”

“ The city was the emporium for the silver- and gold-mines of New Spain, and its [pg 271] merchants lived in great opulence, their houses rich in articles of gold and silver, adorned with beautiful paintings and other works of art, and full of the luxuries of the age. The churches were magnificent in their decorations, and richly embellished with ornaments in gold and silver. The city presented such a prize to cupidity as freebooters and bandits had rarely conceived of in their wildest dreams. ”

“ Aside from its name, Spanish Town has nothing Castilian about it. One may seek in vain for crumbling battlements and quaint lantern-like sentry-boxes, massive buildings with arched portals leading to flower-filled patios, embrasured windows with iron grilles or jutting balconies. ”

“ These are surrounded by stately buildings, the archiepiscopal palace with its memories of Gelmirez, the royal hospital founded by Ferdinand and Isabella for the succor of weary pilgrims, ancient colleges with sculptured façades, marvellous old convents whose holy fathers were long since driven out by royal decree into hungry, homesick exile, and the columned city hall with its frontal relief of the battle of Clavijo and its crowning statue of St. James. The great, paved squares, the magnificent stairways and deeply recessed portals were aglow with all Galicia. ”