Cabestro

"In its houses built with prison galleries running round their courtyards, passages open to the winds, a single lavatory for all the inmates, a door and a window per cell, live the plasterer, the smith, the carpenter, the newspaper vendor, the blind beggar from the corner, the bankrupt, the rag-and-bone man, and the poet. In those courtyards with their pavement of rounded pebbles, a dripping water-tap in the middle, all the tongues of one language meet: the refined accent of the gentleman, the shameless talk of the pimp, the slang of thieves and beggars, the high-flown rhetorics of the budding writer."

Arturo Barea (1897-1957). The Forging of a Rebel. Published by Fitzhenry and Whiteside. 2001 (p.93). Translation by Ilsa Barea.