The light had been trapped in the middle of the house for years. We opened its way through.

The first time we walked into this house facing the Retiro, the first thing we saw was a wall, cutting the floor plan into two dark halves. A long corridor ran alongside it, its back turned to the balconies, and the light coming through the façade got trapped against it, never reaching the far end of the house.

We decided to empty it out completely. There was no other way to find out where that light wanted to go. Today it crosses the house from end to end, and the wall that once blocked the way now helps guide it. Being a second home, we allowed ourselves something a house lived in every day wouldn't easily accept: the secondary bedrooms are entered through the bathroom, with a change in floor level that signals the threshold without needing a door. In the primary bedroom, an island organizes the bathroom and turns it into the center of the room.

There's one detail almost no one will see: in the primary bathroom, we left hand-woven flowers on recycled paper, made only for whoever lives there. And there's another you can spot from the street: the dining table, in natural stone, weighed so many tons that a section of Calle Alcalá had to be closed off and it had to be lifted in by crane, in the early hours of the morning.

This house taught us that a real constraint, worked through properly, also knows how to keep a secret.