Tucked along the sun-bleached road that slices through the dunes of Corralejo, Villa Tabaiba bursts from the landscape like a mirage dreamt up by Salvador Dalí. From the outside, it’s already a spectacle: a whitewashed wall animated by colorful mosaics and half-submerged sculptures — a mermaid here, a mannequin there — beckoning the curious to look closer.
This kaleidoscopic home is the life’s canvas of Carlos Calderón Yruegas, a Sevillian-born architect turned multi-hyphenate artist. After decades of minimalist design work, Yruegas gave himself permission to break all his own rules. What began as “a joke,” he says, became an intricate, decades-long art project where every corner, window, and statue carries a hidden message — or at least a splash of whimsy. He calls it his personal playground; visitors might call it an open-air museum wrapped in a tropical daydream.
The villa’s garden teems with living greenery and fixed figures — many fashioned from mannequins Yruegas rescued and reimagined. A hand emerges from the earth to ring a bell, towers sprout with glass circles, and tiled creatures whisper from behind fronds. It's both a sanctuary and a surrealist stage set. And though it’s often quiet, the air hums with stories, metaphors, and perhaps a bit of mischief.
As of 2025, Yruegas — well into his seventies — still tends to his living, breathing artwork. Villa Tabaiba isn’t just a home. It’s an island within an island, where logic takes a holiday and art runs gloriously wild.
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