The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Travel
‘This is a place of pilgrimage for Catalans’
Tim Moore explores La Garrotxa, a little visited region with 40 volcanoes just a short drive from the Costa Brava resorts
Our first attempt at take-off is less up, up and away than down, over and out. Balloons are always at the mercy of the wind, and an errant gust heaves the giant orb above us way off centre just as our basket is leaving terra firma, tilting it towards the Catalonian grass at a very exciting angle.
When we do get airborne, I grip the wicker with bloodless knuckles as the Vol de Coloms visitor centre shrinks rapidly beneath us. A balloon ride is the only way to appreciate the very particular landscape of La Garrotxa, a sparsely visited region just inland from the Costa Brava that is home to 40 volcanoes. Our pilot, Toni, points out the neatly cratered cones that nose up from the meadows below, legacies of an explosive history that has been on hold for 11,000 years. It’s a blink of an eye in geological terms, yet most craters are home to a plucky farmhouse or two, and one is boldly graced with a trim little chapel.
Our soundtrack is appropriate: the occasional dragon’s roar of the gas burner above us punctuates the gigantic, eerie silence as that jaunty round shadow far beneath passes over cow pastures and the terracotta patchwork of village roofs. It’s a mesmeric experience, particularly after Toni sends a cava cork flying into eternity and the uncharted effects of pre-breakfast alcohol kick in. Then we’re brushing the treetops and, through some miraculous feat of advanced balloonsmanship, touching neatly down on a country lane, right next to our waiting support vehicle.
Our après-ballon brunch pays tribute to the rich, red volcanic soil, and a verdant fecundity so pleasingly apparent from the hot-air heavens. La Garrotxa is bean country, so blessed with natural fertiliser and warm moistness that the farmers can usually squeeze in an extra legume harvest. Every day I ingest beans in some form: faves vinagreta adding a sharp tang to my extremely rare steak at a lively bistro in Girona’s old town, a buttered heap of black-eyed fesols d’ull negres, or, as in this instance, the default comfort food that is Catalonia on a plate. The first element in butifarra amb mongetes is a fat, peppery sausage or four; the second is a mountain of creamy white kidney beans whose native name means “little nuns”, inspired by pale faces in black habits. I have it three times in five days. Each morning begins with the same breakfast institution – pa amb tomàquet, crusty toast smeared with bisected tomato, olive oil and sea salt, plus a cheeky dab of fresh garlic.
An afternoon ramble through the fields and forests of the Natural Volcanic Park that surrounds Vol de Coloms becomes a tour through the region’s tectonic history. One middlesized magma hillock has been carved open by a defunct quarry. A mighty wall fashioned from explosively ejected boulders winds away into the trees. Laid out on an undulating bed of lava-flow “blisters”, la Fageda d’en
Jordà is a becalmed realm of spindly beeches, sunlight filtering through the delicate, geometric foliage around me. This is a place of pilgrimage for Catalans, subject of a fabled ode by
Joan Maragall, a modernist poet who did much to conserve the language.
It is also a bastion of the Catalan independence movement, which in October last year reached its apotheosis when the Parliament of Catalonia issued a declaration of independence – prompting the Spanish prime minister to dismiss the entire Catalan cabinet, and the international community to reject the claim. The movement’s flag dangles off every other balcony in La Garrotxa, and I am often reminded that for visitors, a little Catalan – and even less Spanish – goes a long way: “Just a ‘bon dia’ here and there will make you very popular.”
In recent centuries, the fault-lines that run under La Garrotxa have expressed themselves solely through earthquakes – most catastrophically in 1428, when almost every settlement was flattened. Olot, the area’s capital, is a low-key market town that at first glance gives a good impression of having gone very quietly about its business ever since. Only after a long stroll do I notice its peculiarities. Pink and turquoise art nouveau mansions are embellished with dragons, their bay windows held aloft by willowy maidens. You’re told when to wait or walk at the busiest zebra crossing by an illuminated pair of red and green witches, which I later learn represent the 12ft papier-mâché giants who totter through the streets in an autumn fiesta. Most memorably weird is the Saints Museum, a celebration of the religious statuaries that made Olot’s fortune in the 19th century. Walking alone through a zombie army of life-size plaster martyrs and virgins, it’s difficult to maintain an appropriate expression, particularly as many carry their more fragile accessories – hands, lambs, babies’ heads – in little string bags round their necks. In the basement, craftsmen maintain the tradition behind a viewing window.
A strand of eccentricity seems to run through the region – perhaps because La Garrotxa has been left to its own odd devices, largely ignored by the beach-bound visiting hordes. La Rectoria is a rustic guesthouse with a bijou en suite church, run by an engaging Scottish/Catalan duo, Roy and Goretti. Over a glass of Goretti’s ratafia – a walnutty digestif made to her own recipe from 63 local herbs and flowers – Roy tells me of the self-taught Catalan piper who turns up to serenade their annual Burns Night gathering. “Huge beard, kilt, sporran, the works. His wife knits Arran jumpers.” A hugely