04/09/2025
On the feast day of San Juan we took a train from Madrid down to the Bay of Cadiz to a 19th century palacete with a walled garden. There are roses bent in a curtsy to the fountain ringed by persimmon and olive and lemon trees, and a grand salon with Art Nouveau tiles, a bull’s head with glass eyes and Nuestra Señora de Lourdes in a carved rock niche.
Some days the tide drains to mud and there are pink flamingoes that tip toe across the salt flats. There is a heavy wind that blows for days from North Africa but cannot blow out the night jasmine perfume that hangs in stars across the windows. Inside the house there are seams of sand that spill out of the cracked ostionera walls, a mixture of seashells and stones used by the Phoenicians under a lime wash plaster. The ghost of the sea is so strong it has cracked open the tiles in the garden. It’s all so very shipwreck baroque and of course we feel at home. And a new home in an ancient land for Tulicarpa. Cádiz, or Gadir, was founded by the Phoenicians in 1100 BC. as a trading post, and part of their cargo included silk, which they dyed their legendary Tyrian purple. I love to think of the textile tradition being carried on in a shipwreck baroque palacete, tracing the rhumb lines between Spain and Savannah.
