This is a story about my grandmother, a Cologne author, radio presenter, and actress. It’s also a story about building (houses in mountain villages in Spain). And it’s a story about Vincente, an old farmer in such a Spanish mountain village. And it’s the story of the beginning of a story whose end we don’t yet know. Perhaps it will be told here digitally one day; it will certainly be passed on later in analog form, maybe in an open patio in Calle Las Parras, by sitting in a bar, talking about the history of this beautiful village.

My grandmother was able to teach me a lot. She had a special way of preparing the ground for learning. Her comments and wisdom usually came rather casually. But somehow she had a good sense of when the right time was. So many things are solidified and constantly available for navigation. When we once talked about careers and career choices, she said: “Don’t make what you really enjoy your job!”

Later, I was faced with the choice of whether architecture or fine art was the right course of study. I chose neither. But later, I created many works of art and even built a few houses.

The first house I actively worked on wasn’t my house at all. It was my great-uncle’s house in Dattenfeld an der Sieg, a German village near Cologne with 1000 inhabitants. I was 10 years old and enthusiastically demolished an old chimney. I particularly remember throwing the old tiles from the roof arch through an open wall onto the trailer behind the tractor as fun.

The second house is still standing in the South of France. Nine years later, I helped a friend rebuild an old stone house in the Corbieres. The alcoholic carpenter wasn’t really up for it. This gave me the opportunity to build the first roof truss of my life. I stayed until the roof was finished. And it was a special experience.

The third house was CASAdelDragon. With the help of over 150 people from all over the world, we rebuilt a ruin. After 20 years, we were able to celebrate the – provisional – completion of this construction site with our first art exhibition on the ground floor.

After that, and at the same time, there were other projects in Europe. They were our own or projects by friends. The focus was always on fun and the joy of building. And that remains the case to this day.

An old farmer lived on our street. He is no longer alive. For many years, Vincente walked through the streets of the mountain village with a cold cigar in the corner of his mouth, nodding in greeting or raising his hand, speaking little.

He knew that I was very interested in his aunt’s ruins. He had inherited them but never rebuilt them. Every day, he sat for a few hours on his terrace and listened to the people on their paseo, a common walk through the village in the milder evenings at the time. He looked at the ruins from his terrace. I looked at the ruins from our terrace.

Many years later, he became very ill, and one day, no one knew where he was, and everyone in the village was worried. I fetched a ladder, and a neighbor climbed into his house via the first-floor balcony. Vincente was lying in the bathroom, still alive but unresponsive. He woke up disoriented. The ambulance took him away, and I never saw him again.

Years later, a relative approached me. Vincete told her: “I will never do anything else with this ruin in my life. When I’m dead, give it to the German from CASAdelDRAGON.”

Now we have cleared this ruin of ivy and begun to remove the rubble, debris and garbage. This is a first step. We did this as a token of gratitude to Vincente and his family. And we also removed the ivy from the neighbor’s facade (with her consent).

While doing this work, I remembered my first weeks at CASAdelDRAGON. Back then, we spent a week hauling rubble and garbage. The entire left side of the ground floor was almost completely full of the garbage of a 12-person household, accumulated over the years.

Back then, the village still had a construction waste dump, and we drove there frequently. When the trailer was loaded mostly with construction waste, the farmers would ask us to use it to repair the roads. Than we unloaded on the way.

Back then, there was no waste separation. And I didn’t realize how much recyclable material this construction debris contained.

We have now cleared out a quarter of Vincente’s old house. We are carefully separating the waste and saving all the natural stones. Most of them come from the castle (and were quarried there 600 years ago by Vincente’s ancestors). When they expelled the Moors, the conquerors invited poor families from Catalonia to settle here and quarry stones from the castle to build houses underneath.

Every stone here has a long history. And we are preserving these stones with respect, thus making this history available for future generations.

This is a first step; many more will follow.

The plan is to develop this house as a social meeting place. An open kitchen in an open patio, a dry toilet, a small storage room, a bar, and perhaps two sleeping spaces for pilgrims and other guests of this village. The house is intended to be open for the visitors of CASAdelDRAGON, but especially for the residents of the old quarter of Cervera del Maestre. We also want to commemorate a time when residents would sit in front of their houses in the evenings, hoping that others would pass by on their paseo and be ready for a chat. These conversations were often prolonged with pastries and drinks. This is how it can be again, once social media has found its way back from the digital mess to the analog beauty.

Vicente’s house has now waited 50 years. Its time has come. We will report back.

Now we are thinking about the right name.

• Pati de l’Óssa Major
• Bar Regalo / Regalo Bar
• Casa de l’Óssa Major
• La Botiga Gratuïta
• El Pati

What is you favorite? Let us know. Come around for a chat. The gallery is open all weekends in summer.