A matador’s head and shoulders by Jorge stand out against the yellow walls in the kitchen; the chair and table were flea-market finds
All of these are set against the most wonderful, whimsical backdrop of Jorge’s own work on the walls. He is a man of many talents – designing clothes, creating murals, doing performance art (all with no formal training). ‘I’ve been painting the walls of my family’s houses since I was three,’ he recalls. The works in his apartment are somewhat more advanced, as he has drawn on his admiration for Jean Cocteau and his own take on mythology to cover the walls in muscular men, theatrical swags and horse-riding gods. ‘I never have a plan before I paint,’ he admits. ‘So a mistake just gets turned into something else. I never erase what I have painted – I just add more whenever I see a white space.’ On the day we visit, a 45°C heatwave is not enough to stop Jorge’s creative mind racing. He had decided earlier that this was the ideal day to paint a previously unadorned blue wall in the main salon with a set of dramatic curtains.
The pillowcases in the bedroom feature Jorge’s monogram.
His way of working is admirable and his mind never stops coming up with new ideas and ways to share his creative world with others. That is precisely how he views his own apartment: ‘I like sharing the place so that everybody can enjoy it. It is not a kind of museum house, so it’s OK for things to get broken. I like people to feel as if my place is theirs.’
What of the future of the palacio as a whole? ‘It’s a life-long project for me,’ says Jorge, explaining his aim is to complete the circle on the building’s history and create an artists’ residence ‘in the same way that greats such as Goya were once painting within these rooms’. He will tackle the rest of the property little by little, doing it up in the same respectful way in which he has approached his own quarters. How does the rest of the family feel? ‘Since I was young, I’ve always shown this interest in bringing life back to the building, so they are proud of me for taking on this project’.