  The family moved from Madrid to Ávila where Santayana spent his boyhood. In 1869, Santayana’s mother left Spain in order to raise the Sturgis children in Boston, keeping her pledge to her first husband. In 1872, his father realized the opportunities for his son were better in Boston, and he moved there with his son. Finding Boston inhospitable, puritanical, and cold, the father returned alone to Ávila within a few months. The separation between father and mother was permanent. In 1888 Agustín wrote to Josefina: “When we were married I felt as if it were written that I should be reunited with you, yielding to the force of destiny. Strange marriage, this of ours! So you say, and so it is in fact. I love you very much, and you too have cared for me, yet we do not live together” (Persons and Places, 9).