I could talk to you about the way the vaults were formed; about the way the flooring tiles were manually kilned in a wood-fired oven; about the appreciation for the work of the stonemasons, who laid each stone thinking about how the next one would fit in; about the elaborate texture of the white façade: a tribute to the fishermen’s houses. Or I could talk about the Cubist Picasso inspiration of this break-joint huddle of simple houses, or about the Sacred funicular structure that holds up this composition…

But I want to tell you about that piece of land lost in the middle of the sea; about the innocent spot of that olive tree and how the house had to adapt to it, so that the tree wouldn’t have to be cut down; about conversations with Paco, in that way of Cadaqués speaking and thinking, full of salt and wisdom; about those Fridays of endless turns chained together into the road that I took on my motorbike visiting the building site; about the days of the tramontane wind, the blinding sun or the snowy Canigou on my way back.

I would also like to have a Rudolso house in Cadaqués, a shelter from nervous life, wide open to the sea and the wind. A haven of peace where one can think slowly, which, as Narcís from the garden says, is the only way to think right.

*Rudolso: Own term of the dialectal variant of Cadaqués. Place where one is sheltered from the wind, from bad weather. Small fishermen’s shelter located by the sea and built manually.