The Boí valley sits on the western edge of Aigüestortes, Catalonia’s only national park. Sant Joan, a Romanesque church in the Vall de Boí. The small stone villages here – Taüll, Boí, Erill la Vall – are among northern Catalonia’s most striking. This mountainous pocket reveals some of the most important Catalan Romanesque churches still standing – slender, multistorey, Unesco-listed creations dating from the 11th and 12th centuries, whose interiors were originally filled with rich religious art (most of it is now in Barcelona’s Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya). Spinning south, you’ll reach the Pyrenees’ beautiful Vall de Boí, which I have fond memories of stumbling down into after hiking more than 20km from the not-so-neighbouring town of Espot. While the area’s upmarket ski resorts now buzz in winter, there is plenty more to enjoy through the year, including elevated hikes, a wealth of adventure activities, wide-open mountain views, bubbling hot springs, French-influenced restaurants and lovely stone villages filled with geraniums, such as Arties, Bagergue and Salardú. Until the late 1940s, when a tunnel was carved through the mountains south from Vielha town, it wasn’t even possible to get here by road from the rest of Spain. Up in the Pyrenees, on the border with Aragón and France, Lleida province’s remote Val d’Aran is another surprise. Photograph: Ignacio Ruiz Casanellas/Alamy You can also sail out to a floating mussel farm for lunch, cycle and hike through the fields, try kitesurfing and kayaking or rock climbing, spot some of the delta’s 330 bird species (especially during the autumn migration season), and even join a local family to learn about rice-farming.ĭelta de l’Ebre. I’ve stayed in peaceful rural hotels here, wandered alone along wild, sandy-gold beaches, hopped on a boat down to the Balearic Sea, and devoured paellas at laid-back riverside restaurants. Much of this area has been a protected parc natural since 1983. At the mouth of Spain’s second-longest river, waterways ripple among electric-green rice fields, windswept Mediterranean dunes and marshes where flamingos splash about. Top of my list among Catalonia’s lesser-visited corners is the secluded, rice-growing Delta de l’Ebre, which is around 80km south-west from Tarragona and borders the Valencia region to the south. Soon to follow are electric-vehicle guides (with mapped charging points and recommended car-hire collaborators), tips on sustainably run accommodation, and options for enjoying the various itineraries entirely by public transport. If you fancy tackling the full trip, you’ll need at least two weeks, but it can also be cut down or built around a particular theme (gastronomy, outdoors, galleries). The Grand Tour loops all around Catalonia and is divided into five main sections, with a focus on responsible tourism, small-scale businesses and local culture and traditions. This kind of longer, more in-depth trip is what people are looking for as we emerge from the pandemic.” “If visitors keen to see Montserrat, for example, stay on for a few nights exploring nearby Solsona and Cardona (rather than day-tripping from Barcelona), the cultural and economic benefits of tourism will be felt more widely across this central region of Catalonia. “Before the pandemic, around 90% of international tourists to Catalonia headed for Barcelona, the Costa Brava and/or the Costa Daurada, and only 10% explored the interior,” says Aicard Guinovart, director of the Catalan Tourist Board in the UK, over breakfast at Hotel 1882 Barcelona 1882. Now, as tourism begins to return (Barcelona saw 1.9 million overnight visitors this summer, while the Costa Brava returned to pre-pandemic levels), Catalonia’s authorities are keen to continue moving in a more sustainable direction and combat overtourism, with plans also recently unveiled to transform Barcelona’s overrun La Rambla into an immersive arts hub. Then everything came to a sudden standstill. There were also growing concerns about irresponsible tourism (particularly boat parties) damaging the Costa Brava’s fragile natural environment. In 2019, Catalonia’s capital (population: 1.6 million) received around 32 million tourists – and only 13.9 million of them stayed for one night or longer (still a record number). Local efforts to tackle it already included clamping down on illegal tourist apartments, a ban on new hotels in the city centre and a special preservation status for 220 traditional shops and 11 emblematic bars in danger of being pushed out by rising rents. In the lead-up to the pandemic, Barcelona’s struggle with overtourism was reaching crisis point.
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