El Capricho de Gaudí (Comillas)

The detail that changes our understanding of this building and that almost no one mentions is: the project's architect was not Gaudí. It was led by Cristòfol Cascante i Colom (1851-1889), who worked from a model created by Gaudí in Barcelona. The two were classmates: they both received their architecture degrees on the same day, March 15, 1878.

From this, comes the statement that is repeated everywhere, that Gaudí never saw El Capricho completed. This is the most widespread version, and probably the correct one, but it is worth noting that its documentary support is weak: the museum itself considers the matter unresolved, and there is an argument against it that is often omitted. In 1881, Gaudí had already worked for Comillas, when he set up a kiosk for the visit of Alfonso XII on August 6th. The town was not unknown to him.

The building was constructed between 1883 and 1885, exactly the same years as the Casa Vicens in Barcelona. They are two sister houses, built at the same time by an architect in his early thirties whom no one yet called a genius, and it shows: the same ceramic tiles on the exterior, the same silhouette rising in a tower. Anyone who has seen one will understand the other in two minutes.

Máximo Díaz de Quijano was born in November 1838 and died on July 7, 1885, at the age of 46, and was unmarried. Two independent sources cite cirrhosis as the cause of death. He was of Indian origin, a lawyer, a Carlist, and also a published musician: he composed zarzuelas based on librettos by José María de Pereda and co-founded the Ateneo de Santander in 1865. This profile provides a much better understanding of the man than the cliché of the "wealthy Spaniard returning from the Indies."

His relationship with the López family, the family of the Marquis of Comillas, is also misrepresented. He was not the Marquis's brother-in-law: he was a concuñado. His sister, Benita, married Claudio López, brother of Antonio López y López. The version that the Marquis was his father-in-law is widespread and is impossible: Díaz de Quijano died without marrying. The detail is important because it is that relationship, and not a competition or a reputation, that leads an architect from Barcelona to a town in Cantabria.

This is where the historical record becomes unreliable. There are at least five different accounts regarding whether Díaz de Quijano actually lived in the house that was built for him, and these accounts are mutually contradictory. The dates are also a source of uncertainty, ranging from "he never lived there" to "he died a year before it was finished." The honest approach is to present these different versions and acknowledge that the question remains unresolved.

It can be refined a bit: the third and fourth sources say almost the same thing, but with different levels of accuracy, and the fifth directly contradicts the others. However, none of the sources definitively resolve the issue, and presenting a single one as the correct answer, which is what guidebooks often do, is inventing a certainty that doesn't exist.

It's the most repeated mistake about this building, and it's understandable where it comes from: you read "Gaudí" and "colored ceramics" and you complete the sentence on your own. But in El Capricho, the ceramics are made of whole, modular pieces, complete tiles placed in bands, with sunflowers in relief. Trencadís is something else: it comes from the Catalan word trencar, meaning "to break," and it consists of covering a surface with fragments of broken ceramic. There is none of that here. Nor is there any in Casa Vicens.

So when does trencadís first appear? The riding ring at the Finca Güell is often cited as its first use, but that claim has no solid reference behind it. The first use with a firm source is the chimneys of Palau Güell, from 1886-1890, with ceramics from the Pujol i Bausis factory in Esplugues. As a system, trencadís belongs to Park Güell, and much of it there was designed and executed by Josep Maria Jujol. All of that comes after El Capricho.

The two houses were built simultaneously, between 1883 and 1885, and share the same design: brick and stone walls, ceramic cladding in horizontal bands, and a repeated vegetal motif. In Casa Vicens, the motif is the marigold, Tagetes erecta; in El Capricho, it is the sunflower. In Comillas, this cladding also surrounds a cylindrical tower topped like a minaret, which is what almost everyone photographs.

The connection has a curious detail. When, in 1925, the idea of expanding Casa Vicens was proposed, Gaudí rejected the commission because he was fully dedicated to the Sagrada Família, and he himself suggested Joan Baptista Serra de Martínez. Serra expanded the house between 1925 and 1927, adding a tower-minaret almost identical to the original. In 1928, he won the municipal prize for artistic buildings with this expansion, the same competition that in 1900 had awarded Gaudí for Casa Calvet.

The first are the windows that make noise. It's mentioned in almost every visit: that the counterweights are calibrated to produce notes, and that the house "plays" when the windows are opened. It's a nice story for an owner who composed zarzuelas, but it has no documentary support. The second, as mentioned, is "Gaudí was never here," which is repeated as a settled fact when it's actually a hypothesis with weak foundations.

Neither option detracts from the building. However, a website that simply repeats information without verifying it is, unintentionally, implying that it hasn't bothered to check the facts.

El Capricho is declared a monument by the decree of July 24, 1969, published in the BOE (Official State Gazette) on August 20, the same decree that protected seventeen works by Gaudí at once. It is not a World Heritage Site: it was part of the twelve works that Spain presented to UNESCO in 2005 and was among the eight rejected by ICOMOS. It has functioned as a paid museum since July 2010.

In the meantime, there's an episode that almost no one talks about, and it says a lot about how Gaudí's heritage has been treated. In 1975, the City Council of Reus proposed moving the building to the architect's birthplace. The proposal was rejected. It's hard to imagine today, but for decades, moving an entire building from Cantabria to Tarragona seemed like a questionable idea in the literal sense: it was debated.