Camino del Norte Day 12: Santillana del Mar to Comillas

Imagine hiring Gaudi to build your Summer home and then dropping dead a week after taking possession of it? Talk about shit luck.

That’s what happened to some wealthy lawyer in the town of Comillas where I’m at this evening. Comillas was always high on my list of places to spend some time exploring while on the Camino del Norte. Along with Santillana Del Mar there were specific things here I wanted to do. One was to visit the Capricho de Gaudi and the other to visit the Palacio de Sobrellano. As I learned today their stories are linked. 

Santillana and Comillas could not be more different. Santillana is a town born out of the Middle Ages. The architecture in Comillas meanwhile is firmly planted in the modernism of the late 19th century. In fact, there is more modernist architecture here than anywhere else outside of Barcelona. It’s kind of hilarious when you take into account that back in the 1880’s this was a fishing town of 400 people. 

The Camino del Norte and its Indiano legacy.

According to legend, out of this fishing town came a man who went to Cuba in search of fortune. He came back with a bank account Jeff Bezos would be proud of. Then promptly became buddies with the King who gave him a royal title and lands back in his hometown. Now by this point our 19th Century Bezos lived in Barcelona. But he wanted to build a nice Summer palace back home. So he commissioned the Catalan architect Joan Martorell to build him one. Enter the Palacio de Sobrellano. And while you likely have heard of him, Martorell was Gaudi’s teacher. It is how it came to be our Spanish Bezos’ attorney—who had made his own fortune in Cuba—hired a young Gaudi to build his Summer home right next door. And so on and so forth. 

These new rich Cantabrians and Asturians whose wealth was built in the Americas were called Indianos. And this entire region is dotted with 19th century mansions built off of those fortunes. In the case of Comillas, the end result was that this sleepy fishing village turned nearly overnight into a Summer destination for the Spanish Aristocracy. 

Today Comillas has a population of some 4,000 people. It remains a summer destination and is a popular tourist town. It took over 14 miles of walking on pavement to get here but it was all worth it. The walk itself was quite a bit nicer than yesterday. It was much better signposted, routed entirely through rural roads, hugging the coastline for part of it. Nothing remarkable, but still very pretty and pleasant. Tomorrow a similar day awaits. One week till I arrive in Oviedo, the finishing point for my Camino del Norte journey.

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Today’s Stats

Distance: 14.4 miles (23K)

Elevation Gain: 1,728 (526.7m)

Duration: 5:24hrs

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Food and Accommodation

Hotel Solatorre. A perfectly serviceable stay along the way. The room was large and had a balcony. Located on the outskirts of town which had its pluses and minuses. If you wanted to go back to the town center it was a bit of a hike. But then the next day the walk was shorter. My biggest minus is that because there was no on-site breakfast I had a 5km walk before eating. As it turned out this ended up being a good thing.

Lunch: Restaurante El Carel. This was one of the better meals I had on the Camino del Norte. I ended up here after the place I’d looked at it advance turned out to be closed. It was crowded so I went inside and grabbed a glass of wine while a table became available. The waitress was amazing and made the best recommendations starting with the artichokes. I thoroughly enjoyed my meal, the service and the ambiance.