Rustic retreats in Catalonia’s Empordà

As I picked a geranium leaf and held it to my nose, Ernesto Collado, a perfumer and our guide for a morning scent walk, shook his head. “Don’t just smell it,” he said, crushing another leaf between his fingers. “Flirt with it, then it will give you its essence.” 

We had met Collado, founder of ​a natural scent brand ​called Bravanariz​, in the garden of the yellow-stone farmhouse where we were staying that week. Mas Flor is ​one of a collection of 20 privately owned villas in the Baix Empordà region of north-east Spain, ​managed by a company called Viu Empordà.​ “It’s the Cotswolds of Spain,” says Viu’s 38-year-old founder, Pablo Rovira — a rural enclave to which residents of Barcelona can retreat at weekends and holidays.

The houses Rovira rents out are the country and seaside escapes of entrepreneurs, designers ​and architects from the city. “Each home is chosen for its soul and connection to the region,” says Rovira. From Barcelona himself, he grew up spending summers in the Baix Empordà village of Rupià, where the company is now based, no more than a 30-minute drive from any of the properties.

Pablo started the collection with two houses owned by family friends, before word spread and other owners asked to join. Most of the homes have never been rented before. “I need to think: I would love to live here,” says Rovira.

The collection now ranges from petite pads like three-bedroom Casa Suro, in a convent that dates back to the ninth century, surrounded by cork forest, to swank villas like Casa Brava, a six-bedroom modernist masterpiece overlooking sandy Playa Sa Riera, with a seafront sweep of lawn and furniture by Noguchi and Audoux-Minet. Viu Empordà​ doesn’t meddle with the interiors; it’s the owners’ art collections on the walls and their books on the shelves, but stocks bathrooms with natural products and offers round-the-clock service via a WhatsApp group: when our WiFi faltered it was fixed within the hour. As well as terraces and gardens that make the most of the stunning surroundings, each home has a pool. Price is one of the many draws here: a villa like Casa Brava costs less than half what the equivalent beachside property on Ibiza and Mallorca would rent for.

But what really sets Viu Empordà ​apart is that it draws on its network of local connections to organise unique experiences — or “good plans” as Rovira calls them — from pottery classes to vermouth tastings to e-bike tours.​ I’d never heard of a scent walk, let alone been on one, which was why we’d joined the charismatic Collado, resplendent in a teal corduroy suit, matching jumper and felt hat, in the garden at Mas Flor that morning.

Unlike other senses, smell is directly connected to the limbic system, part of the brain associated with memory and emotional processes. That makes it a powerful way to connect with your surroundings, Collado explained, and as we set off around the garden, he introduced us to its flora as if they were close friends. There was pine (cypress trees are traditionally planted by doorways as a symbol of hospitality), rosemary (its aroma subdued after five weeks of rain), sage (once propagated by the Romans). There was the toxic Euphorbia plant that — Collado claimed — a newlywed from a little way north used to poison her husband, adding four drops of its milky sap to his omelette each day. 

It was April, and the Baix Empordà was a poster paint scene, with fields of yellow mustard flowers, and poppies strewn along the green verges. Mas Flor lies in a valley just outside the village of La Pera (a few kilometres west of Rupia), and its gardens, backed by oak forest, include a swimming pool swagged with full-bloom wisteria at the end of a rose-spotted pergola. On the first night, my Merlin birding app identified the rhythmic chirp, like a smoke alarm that’s run out of batteries, of a scops owl. At dawn the following morning, I was woken by a rowdy flock that included a cuckoo and a nightingale. 

Beautifully decorated in subdued colours, with antique furniture and clever details like sidelights on pulleys that I made a note to copy at home, the four-bedroom farmhouse had a large, azulejo-tiled kitchen where we cooked from the basket of local bounty we’d been left, including globe artichokes we steamed and ate with garlic butter. Crucially, the house was hardy enough to withstand our children, and the remote-control car my eight-year-old had smuggled into his hand luggage and insisted on wheelie-ing across the terracotta-tiled floor. 

This stretch of coast is speckled with unspoilt villages, and we discovered a new one the following day: Calella de Palafrugell. We were there to meet our captain, Miki Puig, for a voyage along the rugged, rocky coast, and my nose was on high alert after Collado’s lesson, picking up fennel, salt and pine. As Puig’s Menorquina fishing boat approached the quay, families sunbathed and dug sandcastles on the white sandy beach. By the time we chugged off, I was relieved that the water had turned choppy; I’d had my fill of cold-water swimming after a plunge in our pool the evening before. I was happy to take in the sights and colours: the rust red of the dramatic arzilion rocks, dotted with pine trees; the inky sea, and to hear Puig’s stories of shipwrecks and skirmishes that took place here — including the battle of Les Formigues, a pivotal naval clash during the Aragonese Crusade, which saw a Catalan-Sicilian fleet defeat a French-Genoese fleet.

The fingerprints of invading civilisations are everywhere in the Empordà. The rice fields that surround the village of Pals, a living museum of medieval architecture, dominated by a 12th-century castle keep, are thought to have been planted by Arabs from Valencia. On Palm Sunday, we watched girls with bows in their hair carry elaborately braided palm and olive branches into the village’s Church of St Peter. 

Es Carxofa, in the tiny village of Púbol, is renowned for its rice dishes, and our long, late alfresco lunch in its 14th-century square was the kind of meal I fantasise about on grey November days in London. Between games of “Go Fish”, we shared a crisp broad bean salad and two rich arroces, one topped with a single chicken thigh and a ring of calçots, the other with a fillet of rockfish and two squid hoops that looked, my children thought, like a nose and eyes. Our three-course meal, with wine, cost the same as our Prêt à Manger lunch at Barcelona airport on the way home. 

A few minutes’ walk from the restaurant was an eye-popping sight. When Salvador Dalí’s Russian-born wife and muse, Gala, grew tired of the constant stream of guests and admirers calling by their beach house at Cadaqués, just to the north in neighbouring Alt Empordà, he bought her an 11th-century castle retreat in Púbol. Gala spent her last 10 summers here, until her death in 1982, and in a nod to courtly love, she operated an invite-only policy: Salvador had to have written permission, on cards he designed and which are on display in the castle, to visit. 

So far, so medieval castle, I thought, as I surveyed its crenellations and hefty goldstone walls, sprayed with the white roses Gala loved. That was until we encountered the 10ft elephant sculptures with spindly bird legs roaming through a thicket of plane trees. The decor inside was also reassuringly zany, with a taxidermy horse, plenty of trompe l’oeil, and an ostrich-footed, glass-topped coffee table that we peered through to the room below. Not necessarily design ideas I’ll be borrowing, unlike at Mas Flor. Still, I wouldn’t have minded Gala’s vintage tangerine Datsun, parked outside, or the matching ginger cat lounging beside it.

Gala’s Dalí-designed castle isn’t the only creative landmark in Púbol. Over the castle wall, we found the showroom, in 16th-century former stables, of feted local ceramicist Caterina Roma. She uses “wild clay” that she digs from the Catalonia mountains, and wood-fires her pieces at 1,300C for 48 hours; the ash from the wood melts over each vase or plate and gives it the appearance of being glazed. The result is a pure, strangely moving, rough-hewn beauty that seemed like the opposite of Dalí’s contrivances. 

On our last day, we left Baix Empordà for the half-hour drive to Girona, a city I’d only visited once when I’d booked a Ryanair flight there, mistaking it for a suburb of Barcelona. I realised as soon as we set off on our walking tour that I’d woefully underestimated the city. Our guide Anna Massot, enlisted by Viu Empordà, showed us its Roman road, Gothic-Baroque cathedral, medieval Jewish quarter and Gustave Eiffel bridge. But it was a signpost beside a stone lioness, a replica of the Romanesque original, that she pointed out that delighted my children the most. “Don’t Kiss the Lion’s Butt,” it read, a reference to the statue’s pre-Covid life, when it was smooched by passers-by for good luck.

My children’s palates asseemed unworthy of the menu at the city’s three-Michelin-star El Celler de Can Roca, and anyway, it books up a year in advance. But the three Roca brothers own several other spots in and around Girona, including a chocolate shop selling cacao gin and chocolate video game controllers, and Viu Empordà had recommended their Restaurant Normal. It suited us perfectly: the house white, five euros a glass, was deliciously minerally; the ambience laid-back enough for us to continue our Go Fish tournament, and our meal — moussey croquetas; a custardy omelette topped with barely cooked shrimp; tender, textured beef Wellington — was so good I regretted suggesting we share.

How lucky Barcelonans are to have all this on their doorstep, I thought as we left Mas Flor, my daughter pressing a sprig of her new favourite plant, rabaniza blanca, or Catalan wasabi, into my hand. Back in London, Collado’s counsel to smell consciously is still ringing in my nostrils, and I’m sure the blossom on my street is more pungent than it was when I left.

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