“Alfadia is an old caravanserai.... In its great courtyard is a fountain and an enormous pepper tree....”
(page [93])
“We passed out of the town of Alcúdia by the Roman gate called the Puerta del Muelle.”
(page [95])
Two hours after leaving Palma we descended at the terminus of La Puébla, where we and five other persons scrambled with difficulty into an immensely high two-wheeled carrier’s cart covered with a canvas tilt. For an hour and a half the stout horse jogged slowly along a flat road, and then we drove under the great fortified gateway of San Sebastian and entered Alcúdia, an ancient town of dingy-looking houses, with paved alleys so narrow that our horse had to put his head right in at people’s front doors in order to turn the sharp street corners.
Alcúdia is still surrounded by strong walls and a moat, fortifications dating partly from Roman and partly from Moorish days. During the great peasant revolt of the sixteenth century the Aragonese nobles came here for refuge; their yoke had been a heavy one, and since the annexation of the island by the crown of Aragon discontent and unrest had filled the population. Oppressed and heavily taxed, they at last rose in insurrection, and forming themselves into armed bands laid siege to Alcúdia till the arrival of a Spanish fleet turned the scales against them. Their leader, Colom, was beheaded, and his head sent to Palma, where for more than two hundred years it hung in an iron cage at the Puerta Margarita, near to which is a square that still bears his name.
We did not stop in Alcúdia, but passing out of the town by the fine Roman gate called the Puerta del Muelle we drove on to the harbour, about a mile distant.