PASCUA’S VACATIONS

We visited the decorator Pascua Ortega’s house in a small village in Ampurdán, which is the perfect place for vacations. It is called ‘La Figuera’ and, although it is new, it has the warmth of these spaces very lived and the touch of the master.

The old fig tree that bears fruit at the foot of the rectangular raft that presides over the garden. There also grow hydrangeas, agapantos, lavender, rosemary and rhododendrons, and they are seen in the bottom the sharp glasses of the cypresses that pespuntean the wall of the rectory. From the rooms you can see the sea, because the small village of the lower Ampurdán is high and allows to contemplate the blue horizon at the end of the patchwork of luminous greens that cover the Catalan countryside. To undertake the work, Pascua Ortega hired Miquel Pallès, a young builder of the place expert in ancestral techniques: “Without him it would not have been possible to achieve the final appearance of the house,” he confesses. They bought beams, gates, gates and windows in demolitions, followed strictly the architectural rules of the area, and they respected some jewels of the facade and the walls like the arched windows and the facing stone benches – the confessors – in front of the viewpoints The objective was to build a house that was mixed with the environment, solidly built, a village house rich in poor materials, and like those of old peasants, unpretentious.

Once the container was made, once the peasant look was achieved, all that was left was to sew and sing. For Pascua it was a party to dress him.  A piece of furniture here, a market there, a brocante above, a relic down. “What I have, what I unpack, what I find, what I retapizo, what I restore, what I discover in the area grabbers, what happened from one house to another, what I recover, what I take … The house has been filled almost alone, very naturally and has the warmth of the very experienced.  Actually, that is always the great objective that I pursue in all my houses, my great obsession, that at the end it seems as if they have been open years, that the hand of the decorator is not noticed.  And to put the icing on, its indispensable: fire, music, books and a huge television. “And if that adds a good racking of guests, the climate is achieved,” Pascua finishes.

Moreover, the master of interior designers loves the same things that Pla loved: strolling through the fortified towns of the region, eating (and enjoying) Catalan elementary cooking – “snails, rovellós, all october mushrooms, wondering … “- listen to the rumor of the waves from some fishing port, to track markets, to guess the winds, and to be carried away by the placidness of the time, that in these latitudes usually runs slowly.