La Tallada d'Empordà

The village that forgot to shout

Stand still on Carrer Major at half-past eleven on a Tuesday morning and the loudest sound is a bicycle chain. La Tallada d'Empordà has only 475 residents, one bakery that still closes for siesta, and a 16th-century grain store so perfectly proportioned it looks like someone hit “paste” on a medieval architecture textbook. Blink while driving the GI-654 and the whole place slips past in the rear-view mirror; blink again and you’ll have missed the turning for the coast, too.

Altitude: eighteen metres. Not a mountain village, then, but not quite flatland either. The church tower of Sant Feliu pokes up just high enough to guide tractors home across the cereal quilt that stretches towards the Montgrí massif. On clear winter days the Pyrenees appear as a white saw-blade on the horizon; in high summer the heat shimmers like glass and the only shade is inside the stone arcades of the plaça.

What passes for a rush hour

There isn’t one. A couple of vans deliver bread to L’Empordanet restaurant, the village’s only formal dining room, and by 09:30 the baker has rolled down his shutter. That’s the commercial pulse. Visitors who arrive expecting gift shops or even an ATM are politely redirected 7 km south-east to Torroella de Montgrí, where the cash machine lives beside a supermarket that stays open on Sundays.

The upside of such minimal infrastructure is the soundtrack. Night-time brings total silence, broken only by the church bell counting the hours and, in late August, the occasional acoustic guitar drifting from someone’s courtyard. British second-home owners compare it to an English village circa 1973, minus the parish council politics.

A wall, a well, and a wine list you can recite

The single “must-see” is the Pou de la Vila, a cylindrical stone granary built in 1594. You can’t go inside—it’s privately owned and still used for storage—but the exterior is the photograph everyone takes: honey-coloured stone, tiny slit windows, perfect symmetry. Stand here long enough and a local will pause to explain, in a mixture of Catalan and GCSE English, how grain was winched up by mule power. The conversation usually ends with directions to the nearest vineyard.

Wine tasting here is refreshingly un-corporate. Celler Mas Miquel, fifteen minutes by car towards Ullastret, charges €10 for three generous pours and lets you keep the glass. Their white Garnatxa blanca tastes like lemon peel and herbs—closer to Picpoul than to the oaky Chardonnays most UK supermarkets push as “Spanish white”. Bottles start at €7.95; the owner will lash them into a cardboard beer tray so they don’t roll around the hire-car boot.

Pedal, stroll, then retreat

La Tallada functions best as a base rather than a destination. Flat farm tracks radiate towards neighbouring hamlets: Fontanilles, Palau-sator, Pals. Rent a bike in Torroella (€18 a day; reserve the evening before) and you can loop 25 km through rice fields and apple orchards, stopping for a cortado in a bar that has never heard of oat milk. Walkers should aim for the Camí de la Plana, a way-marked path that leaves from the cemetery gate and threads between wheat and sunflowers for 5 km until it bumps into the medieval walls of Peratallada. Allow two hours, plus another thirty minutes if you succumb to the lure of chilled vermouth in Peratallada’s main square.

Summer heat can be brutal; start before nine or wait for the long September evenings when the tramuntana wind sweeps the sky crystal clear. Winter is mild—think Devon without the rain—but short days mean you’re driving back in the dark on unlit lanes.

Eating: what to expect when you’re expecting dinner

Restaurant L’Empordanet opens for lunch from 13:00-15:30 and for dinner 20:30-22:00. That’s it; no tapas bar, no chippy alternative. The three-course menu del dia costs €18 and might feature rabbit stew with prunes, or a thyme-scented rice casserole the size of a satellite dish. Vegetarians get escalivada (roasted aubergine and peppers) and a lecture on the superiority of local olive oil. Pudding is inevitably crema catalana, politely described as “Catalan crème brûlée” on the English translation, though the chef admits he uses a blow-torch nicked from a plumber.

If you’re self-catering, stock up in Torroella before Monday strikes: the village bakery shuts for the entire day and the nearest supermarket is a 20-minute drive. Evening picnics work well; buy a slab of formatge de cabra, a tomato the size of a cricket ball, and a 75 cl bottle of Empordà blanc for €3.95, then sit on the church steps watching swifts stitch the sky.

When the fiesta forgets to wake the tourists

Mid-August brings the festa major in honour of Sant Feliu. Events kick off with a communal paella cooked in a pan two metres wide and conclude at 02:00 with fireworks that sound like someone dropping a cutlery drawer down the stairs. Visitor numbers swell to—wait for it—maybe 600. There are no wristbands, no €12 mojitos, no bouncers. If you want to join the sardana dance in the square, someone will lend you a handkerchief.

Spring and autumn offer quieter pleasures. Late April sees the Baix Empordà cycle sportive; riders coast through La Tallada dispensing greetings in six languages. October is mushroom season: locals emerge with wicker baskets and knives the size of machetes, heading for the pine woods beneath Montgrí. Ask permission before tagging along; the best spots are family secrets inherited like war medals.

The practical bit, because someone has to mention the car

You need wheels. Public transport exists—a twice-daily bus from Girona at 12:15 and 18:10—but the return journey finishes at 19:00, long before any restaurant starts serving dinner. Fly to Girona with Ryanair from Stansted, Bristol or Manchester (April-October), collect a hire car and you’re on the village edge in 45 minutes. From Barcelona reckon 1 h 30 min via the AP-7 toll (€9.45 each way). Park outside the walls; the old quarter’s lanes are single-track and reversing into a medieval doorway is an expensive way to learn clutch control.

Mobile signal inside stone houses drifts between one bar and none; download offline maps before you set out. There is no cash machine; the nearest is in Torroella next to the Eroski supermarket. Sunday and Monday most things are shut—yes, even the bakery—so buy milk on Saturday like everyone else.

Leaving without the gift-shop trauma

La Tallada won’t change your life. It will, however, reset your ears to “quiet”, remind you that bread tastes better when it’s still warm from a wood-fired oven, and prove that a village can survive without selling fridge magnets. Drive out at dawn and the only tailback is a farmer herding cows across the GI-654. That, in a corner of Spain otherwise busy marketing itself, feels like the rarest souvenir of all.