The Concha Espina house that looks like an impressionist painting is for sale.

"It's beautiful because it was built there by accident," says Paloma Sainz de la Maza of Luzmela, the house that her grandmother Concha built in the 1920s in the village of Mazcuerras (Cantabria), images of which have begun to circulate as if they were objects from another world, scenes from an Impressionist painting or some passage from In Search of Lost Time. The beautiful house, "built there by accident," to which Sainz de la Maza refers, is for sale, with its centuries-old and overwhelming history. Concha, the grandmother who commissioned the construction, was the novelist Concha Espina (1869-1955), founder of a dynasty of writers, musicians and journalists who, with the sale of the House of Luzmela , will lose their reference. Concha Espina's family has negotiated for years with the Government of Cantabria to convert the mansion into a museum, but has now given up on reaching an agreement, so the house is on the market. "They said we were asking for a lot of money, but it's not true. "We always made low offers," says Concha Muguerza, the great-granddaughter of Concha Espina, daughter of Paloma Sainz de la Maza. Her theory is that the author of La Esfinge Maragata has been dubbed the simplistic reputation of a Francoist writer, and that this makes public administrations uncomfortable. "The only thing they understand by culture is the same old stuff: firecrackers, bullfights, and tambourines."

What can we say about the House of Luzmela? Its name refers to The Girl of Luzmela , the 1909 novel with which Concha Espina became a writer of enormous public and critical acclaim, probably before any other woman in Spain. According to the real estate advertisement, the house has four bedrooms and three bathrooms spread over 300 square meters on two floors and a loft. The plot is 950 square meters, 840 of which is garden , and includes " two hundred-year-old linden trees, two fir trees, a magnolia tree, and a few boxwood trees where birds of prey nest," according to Paloma Sainz de la Maza. Listening to the description of the trees is moving: the granddaughter of Concha Espina, writer and journalist, is 92 years old and has lost her sight, just as Concha Espina did. When referring to her writer grandmother, she calls her "Godmother."

The house's listing includes 24 photos that look like 24 paintings and a description: "Inside, original features are preserved, such as polished antique floors, traditional wooden carpentry , solid doors, and fireplaces that give the rooms character and warmth. On the ground floor, we find the kitchen (in need of renovation), a full bathroom, the main living room, and a hallway. The first floor houses three bedrooms, another full bathroom, and a large living room with a library and office, ideal for those looking for a work or creative space in an inspiring environment. In the attic, an open-plan room and a third bathroom offer multiple uses: from an artistic studio to an additional bedroom or relaxation area." There is one more important detail: the price of the house: 895,000 euros.

Concha Muguerza, Paloma's daughter, explains that the house tells the story of Concha Espina and her dynasty. In short: the writer's parents were well-to-do bourgeois from Santander and owned a plot of land in Mazcuerras, near Cabezón de la Sal, which they ran as a stable , a post house where wagons traveling from Santander (41 kilometers away) to Madrid stopped and where horses were changed. Concha Espina grew up in Santander, more or less removed from the livestock world, in a prosperous, intellectually conformist provincial environment, until her father, Víctor Espina, went bankrupt. The family then took refuge on the Mazcuerras estate. The writer was a teenager when she arrived in the town. Her mother died there in 1891.

Ruin and orphanhood led to a marriage of convenience. In 1893, Concha Espina married Ramón de la Serna y Cueto, a member of a family with businesses in Chile . The couple moved to America, were unhappy, and faced financial difficulties. As a result, Concha Espina began writing for the Buenos Aires press. Later, she tried her hand at writing novels. She was successful, returned to Spain, and her husband became so jealous that he destroyed her manuscripts and forbade her from writing. Strengthened by her new financial independence, Concha Espina sent Ramón de la Serna to Mexico and later, when the Second Republic approved the divorce, she separated from him in court.

With the money from her books, Concha Espina converted the old stable/postal house into an unusual mansion, neither bourgeois nor stately, neither Indian nor modernist, but all at once . She did it little by little, adding sumptuous pieces, sculptures and paintings. "I remember this house as a place full of papers and works of art," says Concha Muguerza. Papers belonging to her great-grandmother Concha, her grandmother Josefina de la Serna , her husband, the guitarist Regino Sainz de la Maza , her uncles Víctor and Ramón de la Serna, her cousin María Blanchar , a dear family friend named Federico García Lorca ...

The name García Lorca is apt to explain Concha Espina 's complex role in the Spain heading toward war. The writer from Santander was a "deeply religious" Falangist, according to her great-granddaughter. Her son, Víctor, was a powerful and feared journalist during the Franco regime. And, at the same time, Espina was the opposite of a conservative woman. She was successful as a professional, challenged men in positions of power in Spanish literature, was a pioneer in aviation and divorce, led the miners' protests in the Mazcuerras region, and fraternized with dozens of left-wing writers and artists. Even the Republican Clara Campoamor was her divorce counselor... When the Civil War arrived and Santander became a Republican stronghold, Concha Espina was 66 years old. She cloistered herself in the mountain house with her daughter, fearing for her life, and wrote three books of testimony: Slavery and Freedom, Rearguard, and The Red Moon . It was the war that changed her worldview, making her more rigid. In 1948, the writer received the Order of Alfonso X the Wise at her home in Mazcuerras.

It only remains to quote La niña de Luzmela , the 1909 book that Concha Espina wrote to describe her childhood as a destitute orphan in Mazcuerras: “With astonishing ease, Carmencita adapted to Luzmela’s cold, sedative life. Her robust and well-balanced nature suffered no alteration in the atmosphere of lethal stillness that permeated the palace; she observed everything with her deep-set gray eyes and gently identified with the peace and sadness of the old stately home . The charm of her person brought a note of beauty and sweetness to the palace, without disturbing the gentle waves of that calm and silent existence, in the midst of which Carmencita felt loved, with that sharp intuition that never deceives children.”