Two months as a copilot between Spain, France, and Italy. Very brief stops, very long stops, and pauses for half a drag on a cigarette in the sun in the tiny fenced dog run on the N-340. On the map, the journey is stressful; for the eyes, it's respite. The Mediterranean always brings me back home: the flavors, the smells, the colors are familiar, they're roots. It doesn't matter where Google Maps places me. Everything has been seen, already experienced.
On the thirty-sixth, however, I wake up in Altea and swear the mountain outside my bedroom window is identical to the one in my childhood, all that's missing is the dinosaur-shaped tree. I hop in a taxi and take a look at the Old Town, which is obviously a copy of Otranto, with the same shops, even. During the ride, I think about my eighteen-year-old vacation on the Amalfi Coast, Italy. And also, on the Peñón de Ifach, I catch a glimpse of an unfinished excursion on Monte Guglielmo. Everything is recognizable, everything already stored in my memory.
Then I get out of the taxi. And suddenly, I don't recognize myself anymore.
It's a color.
A red that rises in the landscape, tearing me from my calm. I didn't expect it there, I hadn't anticipated it. I still don't know if I like it or it irritates me; I only know that it interrupts the automatism of my gaze. This is what in the theory of perception is called chromatic salience: when a color emerges until it becomes the sole protagonist in the visual field.
That intruder is the Red Wall, in the La Manzanera residential development in Calpe, designed by Ricardo Bofill i Leví. Designed in 1968 and commissioned by the architect and completed between 1972 and 1973, it is a residential complex of around fifty apartments, with a solarium, swimming pool, terraces, and common areas. The geometric layout is inspired by the Greek cross, with repeating and intertwining arms, evoking the North African casbahs.
But what's truly striking is the building's skin. The exterior façade isn't a single red, but rather a variety of shades that complement and contrast each other to accentuate the contrast with the landscape. Not everything, however, is red: in the courtyards and stairwells, blues, violets, indigos, and light blues appear. Sometimes they blend with the sky, other times they contradict it, in an optical interplay that changes with the Mediterranean light.
I can barely make out any of this. Because " Red Wall " is a name that becomes reality: an impenetrable wall , protected by fences, watched over by a security guard, and even more so by the watchful eye of an old woman smoking as she strolls through the garden, who won't let you explore its interior.
All that remains for me is red, this radical architectural laboratory born to surprise, to break the continuity of the landscape . A red that intersects with the Peñón de Ifach, with the blue of the Mediterranean, with everything my memory took for granted.
And then the intruder only makes sense in this space that interrupts my journey.
Credits:
Photography by Alicia Delgado and Isabel Sfarzetta
La Muralla Roja is a private development. All photographs were taken with permission. Unauthorized access to the property is not recommended.
