Folgueroles

A village that keeps its own altitude

At 550 m, Folgueroles is just high enough for the air to feel thinner than Barcelona’s, yet low enough for almonds and olives to survive. Morning mist pools in the valley of the River Gurri, then burns off to reveal a checkerboard of wheat, fodder maize and the tiny walled plots that Catalans call tancats. From the church square you look south across the Plana de Vic and north to the forested ridge of El Montseny; the temperature drops a degree for every hundred metres you walk toward the trees. In July that can be the difference between needing sunscreen and needing a jumper.

The village itself is strung along a single ridge road. Stone houses painted the colour of pale honey face the agricultural plain; their rear walls back onto lanes that peter out into tractor-width dirt tracks. You can walk from one end to the other in twelve minutes, yet the parish boundaries stretch for 34 square kilometres of farmland, holm-oak scrub and the first folds of the Guilleries massif. Signposts give distances in time, not kilometres—25 min Masía El Vilar—on the sensible assumption that anyone on foot is carrying a camera rather than a stopwatch.

A poet’s birthplace, still suspicious of fame

Jacint Verdaguer, the priest-poet who put Catalan on the literary map, was born here in 1845. His childhood home is now a museum that opens three afternoons a week (€4, cash only). Inside, the captions are in Catalan and Spanish; English speakers are handed a laminated A4 sheet that condenses an epic career into four paragraphs. Don’t let that deter you—Verdaguer’s handwritten notebooks, ink still vivid, justify the climb upstairs. The curator keeps the shutters half-closed; in the half-light you can almost hear the young Jacint practising sermons to the family geese.

Outside, the village has resisted turning itself into a theme park. Only one café sells Verdaguer mugs, and they’re kept on the top shelf. Instead, lines of his verse are baked into the pavement. Stand on “La veu del vent” (the voice of the wind) at 2 a.m. in January and you’ll understand why locals call the place la gola del vent—the windpipe.

Tracks for legs, not Strava segments

Folgueroles works best as a quiet base for half-day rambles. A web of camins radiates from the last streetlights into fields where storks pace behind ploughs. The tourist office (open Tuesday and Friday, 10–13) gives away black-and-white photocopies that show three circular routes: 4 km, 9 km, 14 km. None is way-marked to British standards; instead you follow red-and-yellow paint slashes on gateposts and the occasional cairn built from almond shells. Download the free Wikiloc files before you leave Wi-Fi range—phone signal vanishes in the oak hollows.

Cyclists find the lanes rolling rather than brutal, though the climb to the hermitage of Sant Roc averages 7 % for two kilometres and rewards the effort with a picnic table aimed straight at the Pyrenees. Mountain bikers can link farm tracks south to Vic or north into the Montseny buffer zone; expect loose cattle grids and the smell of wild rosemary crushed by tyres. In winter the same tracks turn to peanut butter clay; locals fit 35 mm tyres and still push.

What arrives on the lunch tray

There are two places to eat inside the parish boundary. Can Pascual, halfway between church and cemetery, serves a three-course menú del día for €14 that starts with a bowl of escudella (a thick meat-and-bean broth sturdy enough to stand a spoon in) and ends with crème caramel you could bounce a coin off. Vegetarians get omelette or omelette—request it “sense cansalada” if you don’t want bits of bacon. Wine is included; the house white arrives in a glass bottle sealed with a crown cap.

The second option is the weekend-only terrace at Cal Xic, where the speciality is trinxat: cabbage and potato mashed together, pressed into a cake and fried until the edges lace with bacon fat. Order it to share; the portion covers a dinner plate and half of your companion’s. If you’re self-catering, stock up in Vic before you arrive. The village shop unlocks at 08:30 for milk and newspapers, bolts again at 13:30, and reopens exactly at 17:00—no earlier, whatever the queue of British hikers clutching empty water bottles.

Seasons that change the locks, not just the light

In April the fields turn Cotswold-yellow with rape; by late May the grain is knee-high and rustles like rain. Summer brings 30 °C afternoons but night-time can dip to 12 °C—pack a fleece even in July. August fiestas occupy one long weekend: brass bands, a foam cannon for children, and a correfoc where devils spin fireworks at 01:00. Earplugs recommended if your rental faces the square.

October is mushroom month. Locals set alarms for dawn, then fan out with wicker baskets and the sort of curved knives that would alarm airport security. The bar posts a chalk list of the day’s haul: rovellons, fredolics, llenegues—price per kilo, cash in hand. Winter is properly cold; the 550 m contour line sees three or four days of snow most years. When that happens the single road to Vic is salted by 07:00, but the back lanes stay white until tractor tyres cut two glossy ruts. If you’re renting a cottage, confirm that the heating is included; some owners still meter electricity at 25 c per kWh.

Getting here, and away again

Fly to Barcelona, collect a hire car, head north on the C-17. After Vic, exit 54 is sign-posted Folgueroles / Sant Hipòlit; the slip-road climbs through a cutting blasted in 2021 and still smelling of new tarmac. Total journey time from terminal to church square: 75 minutes if you avoid the 16:30 Vic school-run. There is no railway, no Uber, and only one taxi firm based in Vic—book the night before if you plan a wine-heavy lunch.

Leave time for a detour on the way home. The C-25 cuts west across the plateau, then drops through the Congost de Mont-rebei, a limestone gorge where griffon vultures circle at eye-level. From the village you can be standing on the clifftop mirador in 45 minutes, wondering how Catalonia can still feel half-empty once you leave the coast. Folgueroles will already be shrinking in the rear-view mirror, the ridge road a single pencil line between gold fields and blue mountains, the wind still rattling the poet’s lines underfoot.