La Bionda

La Bionda

The Costa Brava is Catalonia's coastline north of Barcelona, and it is where the Mediterranean looks the way people imagine it before they have been: pine forests running down to rocky cliffs, water somewhere between turquoise and deep green depending on the depth, coves that require a path through the trees to reach and reward the effort with water so clear you can see the seabed ten metres down. Begur sits at the heart of it, a hilltop village of about 3,000 people crowned by an 11th-century castle, about ninety minutes by car from Barcelona and forty minutes from Girona airport. Eight coves and beaches lie within a five to ten-minute drive, each one different, Sa Tuna a sheltered harbour with a handful of seafood restaurants directly above the water, Aiguablava a wider sandy bay for families, Platja Fonda a steep descent to an almost entirely unspoiled stretch of dark sand at the foot of a cape that has managed to stay that way. Begur itself has an architectural quirk that sets it apart from most Spanish coastal villages. In the 19th century, a number of its residents emigrated to Cuba, made fortunes, and returned to build the elaborately colonial houses that still line the old town streets, giving the village an incongruously Caribbean flavour in the middle of the Catalan hills. Every September the Fira d'Indians celebrates this history with a three-day festival in which the entire village dresses in white linen and dances salsa in the squares. The cobbled centre is lively in summer and genuinely charming the rest of the year, with good restaurants and the kind of squares where long evenings are expected rather than negotiated. La Bionda is a seven-room adults-only hotel in a 17th-century building in the heart of the old town, opened in 2020 by Carla Lloveras and designed by Quintana Partners Studio. The concept behind it is specific and completely its own: the design tells the story of a woman who, in the 1930s, took in influential women from across Europe in this house, intellectuals, writers, actresses, artists, and singers, and each of the seven rooms is named after one of them. Joséphine Baker has a room. Charlotte has one. Carmen has one. The interiors are furnished with antiques sourced from flea markets, custom pieces made for the hotel, Güell-Lamadrid fabrics, Baumann chairs, Fornasetti objects, and wicker lamps, and the whole thing has the feeling of a house assembled over decades by someone with excellent taste rather than a hotel fitted out by a design team in a single project. The original vaulted stone ceilings are intact. The floors are herringbone brick and terracotta. The bathrooms use Grown Alchemist products. The library on the first floor has sofas and serves as a common living room. There is a walled garden with a greenhouse and a communal table that serves as an informal breakfast and dining space. The rooftop has sofas, umbrellas, and a jacuzzi. Breakfast is à la carte, cooked to order, served on ceramics made by a local artisan and built from ingredients sourced from the neighbouring greengrocer. There is no restaurant, but Carla knows where to eat. The people who stay here tend to be those who arrive for two nights and extend to five, which says more than any description can. The short version: A seven-room adults-only hotel in a 17th-century house in the hilltop village of Begur, on the Costa Brava ninety minutes from Barcelona. Each room named after a remarkable woman of the 1930s, furnished with antiques and bespoke pieces by Quintana Partners Studio, vaulted stone ceilings intact, breakfast cooked to order on handmade ceramics. Eight coves within ten minutes, a library, a walled garden, and Carla. Closes mid-November to mid-February.