There are houses that are just an address, and there are houses that are a whole life packed into walls. "El Manantial," Ana Obregón's estate on Mallorca, is one of the latter - and that's exactly why the sale now being decided isn't an ordinary real-estate transaction, but a farewell to more than five decades of memories.

The house was built by her father, Antonio García Fernández, in the late sixties, right on the seafront in the exclusive Costa de los Pinos, with a view of the Cala Millor bay. For the family it was a summer refuge for more than fifty summers - the place they returned to every year, with everyone who is gone now and all the memories that remain.

Around the house stretches a Mediterranean garden with an endless view: olive trees, oranges, pomegranates and native vegetation that asks for little and gives everything - shade, scent and the feeling that the place has been here for centuries. From the garden the view falls straight onto the bay, with nothing to interrupt it.

The pool is perhaps the most-photographed detail of the whole estate - a large outdoor pool surrounded by manicured grass and a sunbathing area, exactly the image we associate with lavish Mallorca summers. It's impressive here not because it's expensive, but because it's simple and open to the sea.

The house itself is built on around 1,000 square meters on a single level - a rarity that lets the house breathe, with no stairs, all the rooms opening into one another and onto the terraces. The heart of the home is the living room, the big gathering place for the whole family, with access to a terrace and a view that comes inside through every window.

For guests there are seven suites, each with its own bathroom - enough for the whole family to be under one roof at once, which was exactly the point of a house like this. The kitchen is deliberately large, conceived not just for cooking but for a household in the true sense, for big tables and long lunches that last until the sun goes down.

But "El Manantial" is more than a sum of square meters, pools and suites. It's a house in which a family was measured out across decades - the summers, the guests, the people who are gone. That's why parting with it hurts harder than parting with any beautiful villa would. Some houses are sold. Others are let go, and that is never easy, however high the price.