7 Rural Hotels & Villas Outside of Barcelona

From private houses to luxury estates, a short list of our favorite stays outside Barcelona.

Torre del Visco - Fuentespalda

Taking its name from the eponymous 15th century defensive watchtower its housed in, La Torre del Visco’s 16 rooms & suites are nestled in a storybook Spanish landscape in the ancient kingdom of Aragón. Food is sourced seasonally from its organic farm which, among other delights, includes almond groves, cereal fields and over 2000 olive trees.

Visit their website: www.torredelvisco.com

Casa El Caracol - Lledó

This absolutely gorgeous private egg-shaped residence, tucked into 8 acres of pristine Mediterranean pine forest, La Casa Caracol, "the snail", is British architect Rob Collier's response to Buckminster Fuller. Its glazed, open floor plan and minimal design counter an exuberant natural backdrop. Sitting at the confluence two rivers this 3 BR sleeping 6 is the ideal family summer escape.

Visit their website: https://www.boutique-homes.com/el-caracol

Mas Salagros Eco Resort - Vallromanes

Located just 30 minutes outside of Barcelona, Mas Salagros is a refined oasis of pampered wellness and cuisine set in idyllic surroundings. The first 100% eco-friendly EcoResort on the Iberian Peninsula, their commitment to top-quality organic Mediterranean cuisine and sustainable tourism makes for an easy city escape.

Visit their website: www.massalagros.com/en

Sa Perafita - Cadaqués

Built in the 14th century and restored in 2004, the Faixó family has revitalized ancient vineyards and traditional wine making in their native Empordà, a region of striking beauty a short drive from the French border. Located within the Cap de Creus Natural Park, where spectacular cliffs fall into the Mediterranean and whose rocky outposts inspired Dalí surrealist landscapes,

Sa Perafita combines luxury, onsite vineyard and tastings and regional cuisine.

Visit their website: www.martinfaixo.com/en

Torre del Marqués - Monroyo

Opened in July 2020, La Torre del Marques is the newest 5 star hotel in La Matarraña, an up and coming region recently coined “The Tuscany of Spain”. Its 18 tastefully designed rooms & suites are the perfect base to discover this fascinating corner of Spain, with 2 of the “Most Beautiful Villages in Spain” - Vallderobres and Calaceite - within stone’s throw.

Visit their website: www.hoteltorredelmarques.com/en/

Hotel Villa Retiro - Xerta

Plush 5 Star hotel housed in a Modernist palace on the banks of the Ebro River, Villa Retiro’s 19 rooms combine colonial charm with the only Michelin Star restaurant in the Ebro Valley. Built in 1890 and restored in 2006, its lavish interior opens on to an equally exuberant exterior with streams, waterfalls, a small grotto and tropical trees brought from Argentina.

Visit their website: www.hotelvillaretiro.com/en/

Mas La Ferreria - La Vall de Bianya

Nestled in La Garrotxa, land of ancient volcanoes and picturesque hilltop villages in Central Catalona, 14th century Mas La Ferreria boasts understated luxury set in a refined rustic setting where nature and history merge seamlessly. Its 9 exquisite rooms & suites’ names are inspired by the craft of Bernat Pagès, a blacksmith who settled here in 1339.

Visit their website: www.hotelmaslaferreria.com

Jonathan Lerner is the founder of Tailored Tours, a creative travel studio curating cultural & gastronomic experiences in Spain and across Europe.

Read our latest article about Terra Alta's Rural Revival

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Why We Travel

Having recently passed the unofficial close of summer in a year characterized by uncertainty, “20/20” vision has turned into something of an anomaly.

But there’s always a silver lining, and from health care and education to work and travel, broken systems and age-old models are finally taking a good look in the mirror to see what’s ugly and what works. Innovation, after all, is borne out of chaos — a re-evaluation of purpose and principle. It was in 14th century Italy, ravaged by the Bubonic Plague, that the Renaissance followed.

With that in mind, how can something we hold so dear to our hearts such as travel, be re-imagined in a post Covid world?

Are Venice’s polluted canals and Barcelona’s suffocated Ramblas metrics indicating that tourism has healthily returned? And to what extent has globalization’s ease eclipsed the deeper reasons of why we travel: the delight of otherness; the surprise in spontaneity; the unanticipated human connection.

As the world buckles under our current plague I reconsider why we travel in the first place and how these values - curating meaningful connection, promoting sense of place and celebrating nuance - can be brought forward when travel re-emerges.

Getting back to the Ramblas for a moment: in July 2017 a mega cruise liner dropped upwards of 60,000 guests in Barcelona. Nearly all beelined for Las Ramblas, Barcelona’s famed tree-lined artery, where sangria and castanets (neither of which are Catalan) satiated their wallets and curiosity. While mass tourism, like globalization, cannot be reversed, I lament the direction in which packaged tours, hop-on hop-off buses, downloadable experience apps and quick-fixes have curtailed curiosity, shrunk comfort zones and diluted bucket lists. The result is an amalgamation of prêt-à-porter tourism, forgettable meals and a dependence on third party platforms where top-rated user experiences are peppered among paid ads.

In a recent interview in Monocle, Value Retail CEO Scott Malkin said “great experience online cannot deliver the emotion, gratification and satisfaction of the physical, memorable, on the ground, in-person experience. The human qualities, the touch, when delivered well, will surprise and delight.”

Where Malkin compares online shopping to the experience of physical retail, the principle remains: the joy of human connection and the power of nuance are irreplaceable.

While a post-Covid world will undoubtedly move more online, there is one sector that must double-down on human connection, and that is travel.

As travelers’ behavior evolves, placing higher value on open spaces, greater privacy and increased safety, this shift presents key opportunities for the travel industry to evolve in turn and create thoughtful proposals which encourage novel synergies: facilitating a deeper appreciation of the culture and gastronomy of rural areas; meeting and supporting artisan producers in situ; learning about a region's diversity and sustainability; or dining on the terroir where one’s favorite wine is grown.

It is only when we take ourselves off the beaten path that true surprise, delight and nuance can appear.

In rethinking why, we can also enrich how we travel, and return home all the better for it.

Jonathan Lerner is the founder of Tailored Tours, a creative travel studio which curates cultural and gastronomic experiences in Spain and across Europe.

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In Search of Picasso in Terra Alta

Gain an insider's view of Horta de Sant Joan, the heart of Terra Alta's rural revival.

In the summer of 1898 Manuel Pallarès invited his art school friend to his childhood village of Horta de Sant Joan in rural Catalonia. Busy sketching and exploring, the visit extended through winter, its role in shaping the direction of 20th century art still unknown. Pallarès’ friend, a 15-year-old Pablo Picasso, was captivated by all he saw – an untamed wildlife, peasants going about their daily noble task, a vernacular architecture whose geometric shapes cast stark shadows under the Spanish sun – inspiring the artist’s early forays into Cubism during his second visit in 1909. Picasso’s relationship with Horta de Sant Joan would remain intimate until the end of his days, declaring later in life “Tot el que sé ho he après a Horta” translated from Catalan as “Everything I know I learned in Horta."

The medieval streets of Horta de Sant Joan leading to the Picasso Museum.

The allure of Horta de Ebro, renamed Horta de Sant Joan in the early 20th century, endures well into the 21st, and not only for Picasso enthusiasts. A hamlet on a hilltop, its privileged location at the foot of Els Ports Mountains has beckoned the likes of the Moors and the Knights Templar, its mix of early Gothic and Renaissance architecture reflecting a history at once affluent, mystical, heretical and artistic. Relics of a bygone era are still present (public announcements are made on loud speakers every morning) reconfirming the pristine, if primitive life which fascinated Picasso more than a century ago.

At 200 kilometers from Barcelona, Horta de Sant Joan remains romantically remote.

View from Horta of Els Ports Mountains. The region's natural beauty inspired young Picasso. © Maïté Cardon

Horta, as its locally referred to, is one of 12 municipalities in Terra Alta, a sort of modern day final frontier before entering the ancient Kingdoms of Aragón to the west and Valencia to the south. With a population today half of that when Picasso visited, the region was later ravaged by the Spanish Civil War. It seemed both Horta and all of Terra Alta were destined to become part of “La España Vacía,” what Sergio del Molino coined in his 2016 memoir describing a desolate Spanish hinterland filled with crumbling columns and ghosts of past glory. Yet the opposite happened.

« Unlike Molino's 'Empty Spain', Terra Alta is in the midst

of a quiet rural revival. »

Skirting the tourism boom of the 1960s and 70s that left a pockmarked Spanish coast, Terra Alta has kept its tradition intact and centuries old olive and almond groves unspoiled. Wine and olive oil co-ops, valuing quantity over quality during the Franco regime, have given way to world- class production by artisans both local and from abroad. Unlike the crumbling estates and untilled fields of Molino's “Empty Spain”, Terra Alta is in the midst of a quiet rural revival.

Picasso made dozens of sketches of the region. To the left, Horta de Sant Joan

Young talent has harnessed the potential of the terroir’s superstar grenache, securing Terra Alta’s D.O. a place on wine lists in Barcelona and beyond. Artisan brewers and producers have traded in corporate jobs in search of a deeper relationship with the land and its heritage. Such is the case of Toni Beltrán, who left Barcelona and returned to his family’s 12th century house where he founded Identitat, recently awarded best olive oil in the Ebro region. Dilapidated country houses have been restored as handsome rural accommodations outfit with organic vegetable gardens and infinity pools. Michelin star chefs have taken note.

Modernist interior of La Catedral de Vi, Pinell de Brai.

Where John Deeres still chug through town square and old men converse in the jargon of their grandparents, old and new mingle effortlessly. With summer upon us and Spain easing travel restrictions, Terra Alta’s physical beauty, sparse population and isolation – the hallmarks of Picasso’s intrigue – check all the boxes as an ideal destination in a post Covid reality.

"La Bassa", Picasso's 1909 cubist masterpiece ©MoMA

Newer initiatives include La Via Verde, a 100- kilometer path of old rail line converted into biking trails which snakes its way through the canyons of Terra Alta to the banks of the Ebro River. La Catedral de Vi, or wine cathedral, is a rare example of rural Modernist architecture crowning the sleepy village of Pinell de Brai. Built as a wine co-op by César Martinez, a disciple of Antoni Gaudí, today it offers guided tastings and a seasonal menu promoting the gastronomy of the Ebro River Valley. And there's El Centro Picasso, equal parts museum and homage to its adopted son. Housed in a stately 3 story building which served as Horta’s hospital in the 1500s, its walls are covered with maps, period pieces and facsimiles of every sketch, drawing and painting Picasso ever made while in Horta. I asked a local resident if “La Bassa”, Picasso’s 1909 Cubist masterpiece painted just down the road, should stay in the MoMA in New York or if it belonged in Horta. She paused for a moment and smiled: “We don’t want to have security guards in Horta. Let them keep it. » •

Reserve a privately led experience across the arts, culture & cuisine of Terra Alta on our Half Day and Full Day Experiences.

Jonathan Lerner is the founder & CEO of Tailored Tours based in Terra Alta. Tailored Tours curates cultural & gastronomic experiences in Spain and across Europe.

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