I was completely amazed by the incredible expressibility of her polymer clay figures and the delicacy of the clothing. There was something definitely sad and captivating in all of her fantastic creations, yet they all seem to look so real that looking at them one would become a little restless. Now I was really intrigued about the maker of these wonders. I wanted to know everything about Candela.

She was shy and quiet in a friendly way. She looked pretty cold and careless by my enthusiastic admiration for her dolls. She told me that she was from Menorca, the Spanish Balearic island, and she had just come to Madrid to sell her dolls. She had no friends in Madrid, she said, and it was actually her first day in town. I thought she was a very brave person. I tried to make her feel confident during the evening, giving her tips about how to do good sales and the psychology of marketing to costumers. But soon I realized that this naive newbie was not a pupil but a teacher: her dolls were selling like hot cakes! I had never seen any artist doing so many sales in one evening. I felt like a stupid and presumptuous chatterbox.

When the market was over, I asked where she was going to spend the night. She said she had to look for a cheap hotel room, so I told her she could stay overnight at my place where I had an extra room. At the time, I used to live in a flat in the same neighborhood that once belonged to my grandparents. It was just a few streets down the market so it was really convenient. I was used to always have someone new staying over night. Anyway, Candela looked so suspicious that I though there was no way on earth that she would accept, but she did. It’s strange but I remember hearing my inner voice saying it would be better that she didn’t. I felt a little nervous about talking to her, but once again I was so intrigued about her mysterious persona and her captivating dolls…

So we both walked up the four flights of the old wooden stairs at this typical Madrid 17th century house, carrying our big suitcases packed with dolls and sculptures. I remember I offered to lend her a hand with her big bag. She held tight to the bag, looked at me in the eye and with a severe voice said “no”. I later realized how attached she was to her artwork and her clone doll. Throughout the night, she didn’t move away from her bag for a single moment. I tried to make her feel comfortable, she had some tea and I drank a little red wine, and we talked about an array of interesting things: Todd Browning’s “Devil Dolls” film, the Black Light theatre of Prague, Vienna’s marionette’s theatre, Jim Henson… she was definitely an interesting person to talk to. She was not exactly my kind of girl, but at some stage I was starting feeling dangerously attracted by her cryptic personality.

But she looked so distant and ecstatic during the whole conversation… when she talked, she would never look at me. She constantly kept her eyes nailed on this Candela replica doll that she held as if it was her own heart. Every few minutes, she would check the hour on the big grandfather clock in the room and when the twelve o’clock bells started ringing out she stood up and stroked the conversation as she had been eagerly waiting for this moment. I can still remember her words: “The night is short and tomorrow will be a long day”.

Detail of ‘Candela’

So I showed her the room where she could sleep. It used to be my grandparents bedroom and I remember she was kind of fascinated by the old furnitures from the 20′s and the camphor scent. I said goodnight closing the door behind me and stood in the living room for a little while, drinking wine and listening to music, thinking about what a strange character Candela was. I remember being slowly dragged by a shade of melancholy and gray sadness, listening to Peter Hammill’s music and looking at some family pictures that I had just found in an old tin box inside a drawer. I noticed that, ever since Candela entered the flat, the lights where kind of dim and foggy, or maybe it was just the red wine… I wondered if Candela and I would have something in common apart from our artwork, and I realized about how lonely we both were. I refused to be like her, I didn’t feel comfortable seeing myself just like a sad and lonely artist, wandering around like a ghost in a shallow city crowded with invisible people who would never had the slightest interest to understand the very soul of my artwork. And then I cried in silence.

The next thing I remember is waking up the next morning and noticing that she was gone. There was no trace of herself except for something she had left on top of the bed where she slept: a doll. It was a replica of me, Koldo, with my long curly hair, my small hands, my black and white tap-dance shoes and my old fashioned suspenders. It was almost frightening but I was really touched. I wonder how she managed to make the doll, working until dawn because the paint was still fresh. She must spent the whole night working on it!

With the hope that I would see the enigmatic doll maker once more, I picked up my things and headed to El Rastro, a popular antiques and crafts market in Madrid where I used to sell my artwork on Sunday mornings. But she was not there. It was a long and uncertain time until I got to see Candela again.