CUCHY AND HIS LOVE PALACE

First published: December 2025

Mr Carrero’s family home, adorned over decades with seashells and handmade sculptural details, stands as a unique testament to imagination, labour and local tradition.

As if on a long pilgrimage from the sea, the walls are lined with hundreds of conch shells. Rows of them have deposited themselves in the creases of the property – along the top of the fence, on the roof’s edges – having followed the procession to the hands of Cuchy Carrero. He sits in a rocking chair, shaded from the sun under the roof of the ground floor of his house. “I find myself living in another world,” he says. “For me, that’s what this symbolises. Although I am here and I see people passing by... but here I am living in another world, one where people value what stems from our country... because we must value the things from our country.”

Carrero Vásquez outside his house in 2025

Juan Bautista Carrero Vásquez – nicknamed “Cuchy” – was born in 1939, in the town of Rincón, Puerto Rico, as the world was plunged into war. The coastal town, on the west side of the island, thrived on fishing. As a young boy, he would watch the fishermen in the early hours of the morning on their way to the sea. They carried their nets on their backs, took their spools and reels and traps to their wooden boats, traditional yolas made of planks, painted in an array of bright colours. Soon, Carrero Vásquez started following them, looking for ways to help them, going with them in their boats. Bobbing in the sea, he felt “that movement, that force, the strangeness of the sea”. He goes on, “The land was so different.”

Amidst the first rays of dawn, as the fishermen pulled up the nets, the conch shells fell onto the wooden planks of the quay. Focusing on their catch of fish, the men would toss the shells back into the water. “It occurred to me: I'm going to try to do something that has to do with the beach... the idea of seashells... ,” says Carrero Vásquez.