Caldes de Malavella

Steam on the Pavement

On winter mornings the drains along Carrer de l’Església exhale ghost-white plumes. They rise from thermal water that has travelled, rock-hot, from almost a kilometre beneath the Selva plain, and they give Caldes de Malavella the accidental look of a film set. Stand still for thirty seconds and condensation beads on your coat; locals stride past in T-shirts, immune. The village’s 8,400 inhabitants share their streets with geology in real time, a fact that still startles first-time visitors who arrive expecting another quiet Catalan commuter town.

Caldes sits 84 m above sea level, equidistant from the Pyrenean foothills and the Costa Brava’s coves, yet attached to neither identity. Girona airport is fifteen minutes away by taxi (about €30 pre-booked), Barcelona just over an hour by train. That practicality has turned the place into a sensible add-on rather than a headline destination: British arrivals usually tack a night here after a Girona city break or use it as a decompression stop before flying home. The result is tourism on training wheels—foreign accents are rare enough that restaurant staff apologise for their English before you can apologise for your Spanish.

Water with a Curriculum Vitae

Romans, then medieval monks, then nineteenth-century industrialists all staked claims on the 60 °C sodium-bicarbonate springs. Two of the three original spa palaces still dominate the western approach road: Balneari Prats, butter-yellow with Art-Nouveau ironwork, and the bulkier, brick-red Vichy Catalan establishment whose bottled water turns up across Spain. Both buildings now operate as hotels, but day visitors can buy timed circuit tickets (€28–€35 for ninety minutes) that grant access to indoor thermal pools, steam rooms and the obligatory drench-shower that tastes faintly of Alka-Seltzer. Bring your own flip-flops; robe rental is €8 and sizes vanish fast at weekends.

The water itself is said to ease everything from gout to post-half-marathon knees. Hard science or wishful thinking? The Catalan health service sanctions some treatments, and retired couples from Girona province arrive on doctor’s orders, clutching prescriptions that entitle them to subsidised sulphur baths. Everyone else is free to wallow, provided they book ahead. August sells out completely; late September is blissfully half-empty and the outdoor pool stays comfortably warm even when the air drops to 18 °C.

A Town that Closes for Lunch

Caldes is walkable end-to-end in twenty minutes. The high street, Carrer de la Pau, offers a chemist, two bakeries, a single ATM and Forn de Caldes, where thermal-water bread emerges at 7 a.m. with a crust slightly sweeter than usual. By 2 p.m. the shutters descend; the only movement comes from the domino tables inside Bar Castell on Plaça Major. Plan lunch early or you will be stranded—especially on Sunday, when a single restaurant on Plaça de l’U d’Octubre stays open and every local seems to have reserved the 2 p.m. sitting.

When the bells of Sant Esteve strike four, the town exhales back to life. Teenagers circle the square on bicycles, pensioners reappear with miniature dogs, and the small tourist office (open Tuesday–Thursday mornings only) hands out English leaflets for two self-guided walks: the “Thermal Sources Circuit” (2 hrs) and the steeper climb to the ruined Castell de Malavella. The latter takes twenty minutes, requires proper shoes after rain, and rewards with a 360-degree view: to the north-east the forested ridge of Montseny, to the south the concrete shimmer of the AP-7 motorway—a reminder that the twenty-first century is only a junction away.

Cicloturists and Cake

Flat farm tracks radiate west towards the volcanic landscapes of La Selva. Caldes is a node on the Girona green-way network: hire bikes at the station kiosk (€18 a day) and you can pedal 28 km to the medieval walled village of Cornella de Terri almost entirely on tarmac-free path. The return leg passes Horta de Sant Joan, where a roadside honesty stall sells avocados three for a euro in season—proof that this corner of Catalonia thinks Mediterranean, not alpine.

Back in town, afternoon sugar hits come in the form of coca de recapte, a rectangular flat-bread topped with roasted aubergine and butifarra sausage. It tastes like pizza that has skipped the cheese course and works as both snack and lunch if you are feeding children who regard squid as a personal insult. Pair it with a glass of the locally bottled Vichy Catalan and you have consumed Caldes in edible form.

Evenings, Quietly

Nightlife is a generous term. Balneari Prats hosts a piano bar on Fridays; otherwise the action is a revolving set of metal chairs outside Café Central. British visitors often retreat to their hotel terraces with a supermarket bottle of Priorat, lulled by the smell of pine and the faint chlorine waft from the thermal pool. Trains to Girona stop at 10:36 p.m.; after that, a taxi is the only escape and the fare doubles. Embrace the curfew—Caldes is a place that rewards surrender to its rhythm rather than resistance.

The Catch

There is one: the village is not pretty in the chocolate-box sense. Modern apartment blocks muscle between Modernist mansions; the river bed is often dry and littered. The magic lies in details you must actively notice—an iron dragon on a drainpipe, the hiss of a vent by the pavement, the way elderly women fill plastic jugs at public fountains because they still trust the water more than the tap. Come expecting cobble-stone perfection and you will leave underwhelmed. Come prepared to observe how a community negotiates daily life on top of a geological anomaly and Caldes de Malavella starts to feel like the most honest lesson in Catalan living you could hope for.

If You Go

Fly Ryanair from Stansted, Luton, Manchester or Bristol into Girona March–October; onward taxi takes twenty minutes. Out of season, Barcelona is simpler: airport bus to Barcelona-Sants, then Rodalies R1 train (1 h 15 min total). Base yourself for one or two nights—longer only if you are submitting to a full spa regime. Book treatments twenty-four hours ahead, avoid August, and remember that siesta is not folklore but civic policy. Pack flip-flops, a swimming cap (compulsory in some pools) and curiosity; the earth beneath Caldes has already done the rest.