The geographic and political center of any town was the town hall, the ayuntamiento, generally next to or across from the main church. As its name suggests, this was where things came together, where people gathered, where all matters could and should be sorted out. Its dealings were the constant hum in the background, the machinery of good government, though the hum might now and then give way to raised voices. It was where prices were set, processions ordered, hospitals financed, communication centralized. It also was where conflicts played out between governing factions, commoners and nobles, the resentful and the undeserving. The stunned inhabitants of plague-infested villages, towns, and cities might have perceived the ayuntamiento as friend or enemy, but in either case it was the local manifestation of the bedrock of their social and political existence.