La Baltasara: Antonio Gala House Museum

The estate that is faithful to Malaga’s 19th century rural architecture and enamoured the writer in the late eighties –when he was about to make the leap from being a playwright to a novelist–, remained hidden from the public for at least three decades.

It was only known to Gala and his closest friends: his garden guests. This “green, terraced garden, this open sky, this tireless light...” as he describes it, was a place of solitude: sonorous solitude, chosen by Gala himself.

... “Always paying careful attention to the different processes that creation uses to come to life, I was tempted from a very young age to watch non-literary creators around me, whose means ofexpression are plastic art or rhythm, volume or time. I always dreamt of learning the paths taken by those who didn’t write or rely on words as a means to express themselves. In my mind, they had tobe reviewed for my own multiplication and my own enrichment. I was attracted to a kind of brainy community where creators from different walks of life produced between them a sort of cross-fecundation that would make them grow mutually and reciprocally draw themselves up and go deeper into the enthusiasm where creation resides.” This is what Antonio Gala says about the Foundation that bears his name.

The seat of the Antonio Gala Foundation for Young Creators is in Cordoba, in the 17th-century Corpus Christi Convent that was renovated for its new purpose by the Cordoba-born architect, Rafael de la Hoz, a friend of Gala’s: “Here young creators work isolated yet together, exchanging experiences between painters, musicians, writers and sculptors. They encourage each other, they bring each other up, they share their own raptures, and this makes for a happy, tense, productive and joyful co-habitation.” When the Town Council of Alhaurín el Grande bought La Baltasara in October 2020, the estate began a new stage that is even more linked to the Foundation, if possible.

“The place that was home to reflection and the most spiritual love for centuries, is now a nest for young creators’ anxieties, desires, projects, shivers and light. These creators will later take with them the fertile memory of their stay wherever they go. This is why its motto is a verse from the Song of Songs: Pone me ut signaculum super coor tuum (Set me like a seal upon your heart).”

The Town Council of Alhaurín el Grande, through its Culture Department, has taken over this new space. La Baltasara has morphed into the Antonio Gala House Museum, but hasn’t changed a bit: the main house, of about 380 square metres, and all the outbuildings, gardens and vegetable gardens that make up the estate -30,000 square metres- on the banks of the Fahala River, they all remain exactly the same as the author left them when he moved permanently to Cordoba.

Furniture, household goods, personal effects, library... Everything is in its place. And it has become a multi-disciplinary arts centre linked to the Antonio Gala Foundation and to Alhaurín el Grande.

This was decided and set forth in writing in the framework collaboration agreement between the institution and the town of Alhaurín el Grande. As a first step in managing the museum, a series of improvements were made to La Baltasara, including indoor and outdoor lighting, an information desk, a larger car park and the museum’s branding and website for tickets to the House Museum and other events organised throughout the year.

Logotipos del Ayto. Alhaurin y fundación Antonio Gala

Alhaurín... As Antonio Gala says

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La Baltasara: Antonio Gala House Museum

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