oday the palace belongs to Don Calixto Garcia Guerrero, Count de la
Sauceda.

Don Calixto and his family have no necessity for the whole of this big
palace to live in, and have been content to renovate the part fronting
on the Calle Mayor. They have had new belvederes built in, and have
given over the apartments looking on the Square and the Calle del Cristo
to the Courts and the school.

Another great building, which astonishes every one that stops over at
Castro Duro, by its size, is the Convent of la Merced. It has been half
destroyed by a fire. In the groins there remain some large Renaissance
brackets, and in one wing of the edifice, inhabited by the nuns, there
are windows with jalousies and a rather lofty tower terminating in a
weather-cock and a cross.

LIFE AT CASTRO

Castro Duro is principally a town of farmers and carriers. Its municipal
limits are very extensive; the plain surrounding it is fertile enough.
In winter there are many foggy days, and then the flat land looks like
a sea, in which hillocks and groves float like islands. Wine and
cultivated fruits constitute the principal riches of Castro. The wine is
sharp, badly made; there is one thick dark variety which always tastes
of tar, and one light variety which they reinforce with alcohol and
which they call aloque.

Autumn is the period of greatest animation in the town; the harvest
gets stowed away, the vintage made, the sweet almonds are gathered and
shelled in the porticoes.

Formerly in all the houses of rich and poor, the murk of the grapes
was boiled in a still and a somewhat bitter brandy thus manufactured.
Whether in consequence of the brandy, or of the unusual amount of money
about, or of both, the fact is that at that period a great passion for
gambling developed in Castro and more crimes were committed then than
during all the rest of the year.

The industrial processes in Castro are primitive; everything is made
by hand, and the Castrian people imagine that this establishes a
superiority. In the environs of the town there are an electrical plant,
a brickyard, various mills, and lime and plaster kilns.

The town's commerce is more extended than its industries, although no
more prosperous. In the Square and in the Calle Mayor, under the
arcades white goods are sold and woollens, and there are hat-shops
and silversmiths, one alongside the other. The shopkeepers hang their
merchandise in the arches, the saddlers and harness-makers