In the Moment at L’Artesania

The Craft of Writing & Unwinding in Rural Catalunya

Photo: L’Albi, Spain in the golden hour, with church tower in the foreground and castell (castle) ruin in the distance.

Manifesting the Retreat

During the last week of March, I was ensconced on a hilltop in the idyllic French Catalan town of Amelie-les-Bains-Palalda, in the foothills of the Pyrenees. The prior three weeks in Spain had been so breakneck I had hardly written a thing. Here, in a colorful studio apartment with a mountain view, I returned to my morning writing practice. At one point, I thought to myself that what I’d like to do next was stay at a writers’ retreat in a peaceful area of Spain. I said it out loud: Please find me a writers’ retreat in Spain.

Within a day of speaking those words, I logged onto the London Writers Salon’s Writers Hour, and, during the two-minute interviews segment at the end, the moderator called on Holly, an American who said she was writing from the hills outside of Barcelona, where she was co-director of a writing retreat. Gobsmacked, and recognizing this as a divine breadcrumb, I hurried to find out how to get in touch with her before the session ended and she vanished. I was so busy looking for her contact information I didn’t hear another word of her interview. Within a few seconds, I found Holly’s Substack account, which led me to the website for her retreat house, L’Artesania. I reached out to her by Substack messaging, and she had availability. Knowing this had been divinely guided, I booked a three-week stay without hesitation.

Meanwhile, almost as soon as I followed Holly on Substack and she followed me back, Jeanne, another American writer in Spain, also followed me. I started chatting with her by Substack messaging, and when I said I’d be staying at L’Artesania, she told me she and Holly were friends, that they lived 40 minutes apart, and Holly and I should come for dinner during my stay.

Photos from top left clockwise: The plaça, with L’Artesania straight ahead (two windows above a passageway), L’Albi as seen from the stream at golden hour, golden L’Albi from between rooftops near the castle, the surrounding campo (countryside).

Getting Connected

L’Artesania—Catalan for “The Craft”—is situated in L’Albi, a tiny village of 700 in the province of Lleida, in northeastern Spain’s Catalunya region. Holly met me at a train station south of Barcelona, and our drive back to L’Albi through the landscape of Lleida brought to mind the American Southwest—high ridges, rocks and soil reddened from iron deposits, hillsides forested with drought-resistant trees. Acres of olive and almond groves surround the town. I soon learned that most of the olive growers bring their harvests to local co-operatives, who press the oil and distribute it under a collective label.

The village of L’Albi is small and mostly quiet, with a few exceptions: the periodic sound of a tractor making its way from a farmer’s home to an allotment on the edge of town. The bells from the church at the top of the street running next to the house, which clang on the quarter hour. Occasionally, a motorcycle whipping around the corner or a delivery van rumbling down the hill. Now and again, a festive celebration in the plaça just outside and downstairs from my living quarters.

My host, Holly Len Downing, at Monestir de Santa Maria de Vallbona, the nunnery we visited.

Holly went out of her way to keep me connected. She brought me over to meet to her neighbor, Concepción, who lives in a house that it is partly built into a cave. A Catalan whose family can document its existence in L’Albi going back ten generations (they suspect it continues much further), Concepción was kind and patient with my faltering Spanish and spoke to me slowly and clearly. She became an invaluable resource, twice accompanying me to the weekly pop-up fish market to help me communicate and order the most delicious fish.

A few times, Holly invited me along to the local bar, Bar Casal, explaining that a “bar casal” was a feature in all Catalunyan towns, “casal” being the Catalan word for a community center and the bar always being situated next to said center. Here, I practiced my Spanish with her friends from the neighborhood. Keeping up with the pace of the conversation took every bit of focus my ADHD brain could muster.

We rode in her car to larger towns and the small city of Reus, birthplace of Gaudí, in whose health food stores and supermarkets I found the foods and supplements I needed. We ate bocadillos in a small cafe and tapas in a bustling outdoor restaurant in a large plaça, and I experienced my first tasting of vermouth.

On another memorable outing, we drove to the picturesque town of Vallbona to taste olive oil at L’Olivera and explore Monestir de Santa Maria de Vallbona, one of several monasteries in the region.

Though L’Albi is situated in a valley between mountain ranges, it’s only about an hour from the beach, and on a warm day, we enjoyed drinks and tapas at a Xiringuito, or beach bar, steps from the sand. Afterward, we drove along winding roads to Jeanne and her husband Juan’s mountain homestead, where we dined al fresco in the garden, under the graceful boughs of a mulberry tree.

Photos: the stream where I walked each evening before sunset, The Hermitage before the trees flowered, the castell aglow in the evening light, L’Albi through an old stone ruin in the campo.

The Chilling-out of My Nervous System

Despite how busy this all sounds, through it all, I maintained a state of perpetual “chill,” my nervous system unwinding and grounding after the excitement of my birthday adventures in Madrid and Granada, a week in buzzing Barcelona, and a weekend of Spanish language immersion at a yoga retreat in the mountains.

I walked daily, usually along a small stream lined by flowers, weeds, and garden allotments, emptying into a network of hilly, winding roads graced by large farm fields. The view of the tiny village of L’Albi in the golden hour light was straight out of a storybook. On other evenings, I climbed the village’s steep, winding streets to the castle to take in the view of rolling hills and farmlands from above.

Early on in my stay, I discovered a small chapel not far from the stream, landscaped with facing rows of flowering trees and benches along the path to its entrance, which, sadly, was always locked when I was there. It wasn’t until my last week that I felt moved to sit on one of those benches in meditation, and when I did, I realized the energetic power of that spot. As soon as I sat, I felt a surge of energy, first in my face, then spreading through my body, taking me into a state of blissed out relaxation. I opened my eyes into a soft squint, through which the world looked smudged and dreamy.

I returned a few days later, and there was that energy again. After my meditation, I read a sign near the entrance. The chapel, called The Hermitage, dates to the late 15^th or early 16^th century. In the 1800s, as a cholera epidemic spread through Spain, the people of L’Albi prayed to be spared, and they were. Two doctors in the town named Cosme and Damia were believed to have been responsible for protecting the town from the epidemic, so they were sainted and the chapel named for them.

My intention in staying at L’Artesania had been to make progress in my writing, and I fulfilled that goal. During my time there I wrote most mornings, and I posted twice on Substack. But as I walked home from the chapel after my second bench sit, an awareness began to sink in: I had been brought here for more than a retreat, more than a discrete writing time. The unexpected gift of L’Albi had been this energy, the shimmering peace and quiet of the land, the golden light falling on the homes and churches of this tiny village. After three weeks, I had been brought back to a sense of serenity and ease, which was just what my nervous system needed.

With love,

Gillian

Author’s Note: This article reflects my personal experience and was in no way requested or sponsored by Holly Len Downing or L’Artesania. She had no idea I was writing it.

All photos in this article by Gillian Gilman Culff, all rights reserved.