Cantalao: "Nerudas`s dream"
"My house is the last of Cantalao, and faces the sea crashing, boxed against the hills. " So begins "The habitant and the hope" the novel that Neruda wrote between 1925 and 1926, where the poet found this mythical territory with waves and winds that come from the ocean, which corresponds to Puerto Saavedra. Many years later, the landscape turned to materialize before his eyes: he found it on the cliffs near Isla Negra.
In 1968 Pablo Neruda buys a land of 4.3 hectares, to build the headquarter of his Cantalao Foundation, an idea that he had since he donated his books and shells to the University of Chile in 1954.
To take ownership of the place Neruda builts a little cottage of wood and stained glass windows, facing south. He installs an anchor, symbolizing his intention to stay in the place.
Neruda's first idea who starts with the architect Sergio Soza, is building a central place with a dinning room and library, and that writers and artists built the houses around small groups, they would use them in life, and donating them to his Foundation once they were dead.
In 1972 the government of Salvador Allende, with the Commission Isla Negra- Pablo Neruda (designed to generate works that linked Neruda, with Isla Negra), order the project implementation to the CORMU declaring it of extreme urgency. The design is approached by three architects: Raúl Bulnes, Carlos Martner and Virginia, Plubins, who works with the poet. He modifies his original idea to transform Cantalao into a meeting place for artists, writers and scientists, in one building that allows the holding of seminars, exhibitions and conventions, adding a center for "study of the sea" in an aquarium.
Intense meetings are conducted weekly by the architects in the poet's house in Isla Negra, where parallel he writes the statute of his Cantalao Foundation with his closest collaborators: Sergio Insunza, Volodia Teitelboim and Flavian Levine. It was also important in that moment, the help of the rector of the Catholic University, the architect Fernando Castillo Velasco, who brings sense of organization and the overall design-landscaping.
So, step by step, with the support of the Universities of Chile, Catholic & State Technical University, Urban Improvement Corporation, the CUT and the Commission of Isla Negra, Pablo Neruda, materialize his project and funding to begin work on October 1973.
After the military coup of September 11 of that year, the works started in Isla Negra, were paralyzed and destroyed.
When Pablo Neruda dies, the property is registered by the name of his wife, Matilde Urrutia, who before his death in 1985, sets the creation of the Pablo Neruda Foundation.
In 1987, as part of a cultural event called Vive Chile, a group of young sculptors from Spain, Britain, Colombia, Japan and Chile, organized by the national sculptor Francisco Gacitúa, works in 9 large sculptures in stone, inspired in the book Canto General, and installed them in Cantalao.
In the Eighth Biennale of Architecture in 1991, the first since the return of democracy, the project Cantalao, was the occasion of the International Architecture Competition for which the Foundation contributed the land, the College of Architects the project and the Government of Chile necessary funding. The first place went to chilean architects Hugo Molina and Gloria Barros.
For reasons unrelated to the Foundation, funding never materialized, so the Foundation today begins a new era, freed from the commitment made at that time.
In 1990, a neighbor the environmental engineer Hernán Durán, propose to the Foundation the creation of an ecological park. Today this proyect already started in a very responsible way, a task of rescuing the primitive conditions of the site, recovering its flora and fauna. The site was carefully fenced with logs and screens, creating a gate that resembles the original house in Isla Negra, to prevent vehicle access. In parallel, we developed the idea of creating an ecological park and sculpture, with a natural amphitheater for poetic, literary and musical events.
The poet's cottage has been faithfully reconstructed from its original idea. The anchor recovered its upright position, indicating again the presence of Neruda at the site.
These actions doesnt mean in any case, the neglect of the project that was conceived with the poet and approved by him: Cantalao 1973.
Because we are "armed with a burning patience" We believe that sooner or later we will generate the conditions that allow us to realize the Nerudian dream.
Pablo Neruda 
