I lived in a convent in Toledo, Spain for a few months awhile back. It was a beautiful convent. Buried in the city, not much to look at from the outside (except that it had some beautiful archways on the back side of the building that could be seen from the nearby mountains. If you've ever seen a picture of Toledo, you can pick it out. The Alcazar on the left, the Catedral on the right, somewhere in the middle there is a building with seven arches. That's where I lived.) I had a room underneath one of the archways, looking out onto the mountains. In the mornings if I had my window open, I could hear bleeting sheep and their little sheep bells.

Truth be told, it was no longer a convent. It was more of a dorm. I was studying the art and history of Toledo at the time, and this is where the University chose to put me up. It had been a convent prior to the Spanish Civil War, but the nuns had been raped and decapitated by solidiers, and as a result, the order had died out.

About a year later I was back home and having a discussion with a guy friend of a friend about different types of government and what they offered the people. He thought anarchy was the only way to go and kept talking about how the people had fought the monarchy, and oppression, and all sorts of other things in Spain during their civil war. I brought up my nuns, and how the church had offered them protection from rape, torture and death, and how they weren't offered protection in the context of the anarchist movement. Ya well, the nuns had it coming he said. I disagree. I had to resist the urge to punch him.

Log in or register to write something here or to contact authors.