About the cockroaches they call fótulas in Andalucía.
Translated by Paola Castañeda ’22
The fótulas are tawny-colored cockroaches, of the same size as the dark ones they have in the kingdom of Toledo; but these are quicker and fly whenever they want to, and they are persistent and innumerable and smell bad. Few boxes or coffers of clothing can keep them out, because they get inside and still damage the clothes. Some say that there weren’t any in this city of Santo Domingo or on this island of Haiti or Hispaniola, and that they came from Spain in the merchant’s boxes; and thus there are many in all the places of these Indies that the Christians have settled. I have not seen them in all of Spain but in Andalucía, and on this [the southern side] of Sierra Morena towards Andalucía, near Córdoba and Seville, and many more in the coasts and ports of Andalucía and the kingdom of Granada, because I do not think they want to reach cold lands. They have one pair of wings like beetles, with which they cover another very thin pair under them; and they are all tawny colored, as I have said, but some darker than others.