On the Cadaqués seafront, among the overall white of the façades, there's a blue house. Blue all over: sky-blue glazed ceramic on friezes, balustrades, and around every opening, with wrought iron. It's called Casa Serinyana, built between 1910 and 1913, and everyone in the village knows it as the Casa Blaua (Blue House). It's Cadaqués's Modernista icon and, above all, it's the visible trace of a story that ran through half of coastal Catalonia: that of those who went to Cuba to make their fortune and came back to prove it.
The blue nobody misses
Casa Serinyana is a Modernista building with an almost total dominance of sky blue. The glazed ceramic decoration on the façade — friezes, balustrades, the framing of doors and windows — combined with wrought-iron elements, is what makes it unmistakable from across the bay.
It was designed by architect Salvador Sellés i Baró and built between 1910 and 1913, that is, in the final phase of Modernisme, when the style had already moved beyond Barcelona and was being built all along the Catalan coast with money from overseas.
Who commissioned it
The first owner was Octavi Serinyana, descended from a family with a long seafaring tradition who made their fortune in Cuba. The Serinyanas were an important Cadaqués family whose wealth had built up in the Americas, which is why the building is considered an indiano house. Serinyana wanted the house to have an indiano look, and the architect captured it precisely.
That's what 'indiano' or 'americano' means here: someone who emigrated to the colonies — Cuba, above all — and came back with money. The village's most beautiful houses belong to former residents who made their fortune in Cuba and returned to Cadaqués to have grand houses built.
Why there are so many along this coast
The story of the americanos isn't unique to Cadaqués: it runs along the whole Catalan coast and into northern Spain too. A seaside village exports its young people, those people make their fortune across the Atlantic, and some come back. What they bring isn't just money: it's tastes, materials, and a very human need for it to show.
That's why these houses are always the most striking in the village, and why they're almost always front and centre. The Casa Blaua isn't tucked away on a street up top: it's on the seafront, looking out at the sea its owner left by and came back across. Cadaqués belongs to Catalonia's network of indiano towns precisely because of this heritage.
How to see it
It's a private building: you see it from outside, from the promenade. That's all you need — the charm is entirely in the façade, and the best time is mid-afternoon, when the sun hits it directly and the ceramic blue lights up.
And if you're spending a few days in the village, try the full circuit: the Casa Blaua, then look with new eyes at the other grand houses along the promenade and the streets behind it. Once you know what to look for — galleries, ceramic, iron, a scale out of proportion for a fishing village — you start to see the whole map of money that came back from the Americas. It's a layer of Cadaqués almost nobody looks for, and it's right there in plain sight.