Spanish Courtyard Houses

In Mediaeval Spain, the northern portion of the country was influenced by the Gothic architectural tradition associated with the Pan-European pilgrimage to the city of Santiago de Compostela in Galicia. The manor houses were veritable fortresses designed to repel Muslim and Barbarian raids. Many of these houses had a central courtyard, where the ownerís family and their pilgrims guests kept the horses, gathered, and conducted business.

In Southern Spain the Moorish and Hispanic-Arabic population lived in relative peace with the Spaniards and the Jews, especially in Andalusia. Most of the cities were colonies founded during the Roman Empire with a tradition in patio house architecture. These cities and houses were subsequently occupied by different waves of settlers such as the Goths, Visgoths, Celts, Moors, and Jews who left their influences deeply embedded in the architecture of the Iberian Peninsula.

As noted in the Responsa (legal litigation documents prepared and kept by rabbis or talmudic scholars), mediaeval Jews referred to their houses with the term "courtyard" rather than "house". These documents reveal that the houses were built around a courtyard frequently leading to an alley. In the seclusion of the Jewish quarters, patios were very often used for business purposes or as a space for religious meetings. The Jewish courtyard house was, most of the time, a single family house.

The Moorish house had another use and interpretation for the courtyard. It was meant as a place for the private ritual of religious ablutions and also a space destined to family solace, one of the few private areas shared by men and women in the Muslim household.

The Christians used their patios to fulfill different business necessities and to enjoy family life. In the cities under Moorish rule the patio was also used for religious purposes and for community meetings. The family used the patio as an open area for household tasks such as cooking, laundry, and keeping poultry and goats. It was also normal to maintain a herbal garden, collect rain water, or have a well.

After the Reconquiest, the Muslim and Jewish populations were forced to convert to Catholicism and consequently intermarried with the Christians. Many of their traditions were kept alive by assimilating into the victors' customs and, eventually, they were brought to the Americas, along with the formal repertoire of design from Northern Spain. Once in American lands, these two ways of envisioning the patio house coincided. Architecture was the most perdurable expression of this cultural complexity in the New World.