"the domestic architecture built during Cuba's first 150 years
followed closely the current styles in the mother country,
particularly along spain's Mediterranean coast," writes Connors.
this inevitable territorial expansion—mostly populated by the
people's multi-hued two-story tile roof houses and stone or stucco
mansions for nobility, such as Casa de Velazquez, the eponymous
conquistador's arch- filled gubernatorial mansion with hand-carved ceilings that resembled the "bottom of a wooden boat"—
also engendered "inevitable envy" from spain's land-hungry old
World neighbors. england and France, specifically, forced spain
into a "state of perpetual warfare."
though it was technically granted ownership of the new World
by pope Alexander Vi—the ruthless spaniard pontiff recently
scandalized on the Showtime drama The Borgias—spain tightened
aug
its stranglehold on Cuba, especially as the island became a
+
choke point in the lucrative 18th-century sugar trade. History tells
sept
which dominated the coastal territories by that time, and remain
to this day. But after the spanish-American War these were merely
opposite page: 1916 pompeian style private pool by pablo Gonzáles Mendosa
