Stone houses of Deià terraced on the hillside, among cypresses and palms
Photo: Michal Osmenda, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

La Escuela del Asombro · Philosophical exercises

Deià, Mallorca

7–8 November 2026

A weekend to read, talk, look and let go, in a stone village between the Serra de Tramuntana and the sea. A small group, unhurried.

The gathering will be held in English.

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The theme

The philosophy of tenderness

For years I have been thinking about tenderness not as a soft feeling, but as a way of being in the world: an attention that sets free. This weekend we will explore it along three paths that keep crossing each other.

  • Amor fati. Nietzsche asked us not merely to endure the life we have had, but to love it. Can we be tender with our own life, just as it has been?
  • East and West. The Daodejing says that the tender and the supple are on the side of life. We will set it in conversation with the Stoics and the mystics.
  • The philosophy of otherness. Martin Buber, Emmanuel Levinas, Simone Weil: the other as someone who calls me before I understand them.

These are not three classes. They are threads of a single conversation.

Cala Deià, Mallorca
Photo: Pom’, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Flickr

The practical side

What to expect

  • When. Saturday 7 and Sunday 8 November 2026. We begin on Saturday after breakfast and close on Sunday afternoon.
  • Where. In Deià, Mallorca. I will confirm the exact venue soon.
  • Meals. Lunch and dinner on Saturday and lunch on Sunday are informal and shared with the group: everyone brings something to share, or we go to a café in the village.
  • Language. English.
  • Suggested donation. 160 euros.

Hacienda Cusín, Ecuador · September 2026

The previous gathering

In September we spent a weekend together at Hacienda Cusín, in Imbabura, Ecuador. At the end, each person said aloud what they were taking with them. This video brings those voices together.

With English subtitles.

What the philosophical exercises are

Who guides the gathering

Pablo Corral Vega

Photographer, writer and philosophical counselor. My work has appeared in National Geographic, The New York Times and Smithsonian. I have published eight books —for one of them, Andes, Mario Vargas Llosa wrote twenty short stories—, served on the World Press Photo jury, was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard and Secretary of Culture of Quito. I trained as a lawyer and run a law firm in Quito. I hold a master’s degree in the Philosophy of Care from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, with a thesis on tenderness, and I am writing a book on the philosophy of tenderness.

But the only thing that matters here is that I have spent my life training a single thing: attention. Forty years learning to look. That —and not a diploma— is what I bring to this gathering.

Registration

Coming to Deià?

Places are few. Fill in the form and I will write to you to confirm.

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Questions? Write to me on WhatsApp.