Vacarisses

The 08:04 from Barcelona-Sants drops just six passengers onto the platform at Vacarisses-Torreblanca. By 08:15 they have vanished uphill, leaving only the scent of pine resin and a timetable that shrugs: next train in three hours. At 382 m above the Vallès plain the air is already warm; Montserrat’s saw-tooth ridge floats in the haze like a stage backdrop someone forgot to strike.

Most British maps mark the village as a smudge beside the C-58 motorway, a place to clock 30 minutes between motorway coffee and the monastery. That assessment is not entirely unfair. The centre is a triangle of three streets, a 19th-century church tower and a baker who knows every customer’s name. What keeps the place alive is the 55-minute commute to Plaça Catalunya: 5,000 inhabitants, 1,200 of them on the 6 a.m. train every weekday.

Stone, Scrub and the Smell of Diesel

Vacarisses spreads across low, pine-clad hills that roll gently until they hit the steeper pre-coastal range. Olive groves survive only in pockets; most fields reverted to scrub when small-scale wheat stopped paying in the 1960s. The result is a mosaic of terracotta roofs, forest tracks and the occasional gated estate built with Barcelona money. Drive five minutes out of the centre and you are alone on a dirt road, tyres crunching on fallen needles, the only sound a distant chainsaw.

The village proper clusters around the Romanesque-Gothic hybrid of Sant Pere. The nave is dim, cool and mercifully free of audio guides; a single plaque in Catalan explains that the bell tower was raised after a raid by Castilian troops in 1714. Look up and you can still see scorch marks on the roof beams, though the custodian admits they may date from a later fireworks mishap rather than siege artillery.

Below the church the old fortified farmhouse of Cal Cego keeps watch from a bend in Carrer Major. The ground floor is now a private garage; stone escutcheons are half-buried in whitewash. Peer through the gate and you glimpse a threshing floor turned into a neat patio with potted geraniums. It is the sort of conversion English planners would agonise over for years; here it happened quietly, one permit at a time.

A Twenty-Minute Walk that Delivers

The single activity every English review mentions is the climb to the Torrota, a ruined watch-tower that crowns the ridge west of the church. The path starts by the war memorial, ascends between cypresses, then levels onto a stony track. Twenty-five minutes of gentle gradient brings you to a 360-degree platform: south-west across Terrassa’s industrial estates, north-east to the amber cliffs of Montserrat, and straight down into back gardens where swimming pools wink turquoise.

Bring water; there is no kiosk at the top and the breeze is drier than it feels. On weekends you will share the summit with Catalan families photographing their dogs against the skyline. Mid-week you may have it to yourself apart from a radio technician servicing the antenna that sprouts incongruously from the masonry.

Lunch at the Crossroads

Back in the square the Tuesday market is folding up: two fruit stalls, one truck selling cheap bras, and a couple who drive in from Girona with a cool-box of vacuum-packed snails. Cafè-Bar L’Estació does a three-course menú del dia for €14; soup, grilled pork and stewed pears arrive on mismatched crockery while the owner shouts football commentary at a pocket television. English is limited to “hello” and “thank you”, but pointing works. If you prefer somewhere that understands “veggie option”, head 3 km downhill to the C-58 service road where Cal Miguelon offers a serviceable tortilla and chips, though the peas will still be frozen in the middle.

For something quicker, the bakery on Carrer de la Creu opens at 6 a.m. and sells coques de recapte, a sort of Catalan pizza slathered with roasted aubergine and red pepper. Eat it on the bench outside and you can watch the delivery vans negotiate the medieval chicane while the village pharmacist argues with a Labrador blocking the doorway.

Getting There, Getting Out

Without a car you are essentially marooned. The station is 3 km below the village along a wooded lane with no pavement; locals hitch lifts from neighbours. Six trains a day run to Barcelona, the last returning at 21:04. Miss it and a taxi from Terrassa costs around €35. Drivers should leave the C-58 at junction 23, follow the BV-1202 for five minutes and park on Avinguda Catalunya where spaces are free and the slope up to the church will stretch stiff legs.

Summer brings dense heat that lingers after dusk; winters are sharp, occasionally snowy, and the ridge road can ice over. Spring and early autumn are the comfortable windows, daylight long enough for a walk before lunch, temperatures polite enough for a jacket at night.

The Honest Verdict

Vacarisses will never compete with the medieval theatre of Besalú or the wine-cellars of Priorat. It offers, instead, a snapshot of how ordinary Catalans live when the working day ends: a quick cortado in the square, children kicking a ball against 14th-century walls, the 9.15 silence that falls once the commuters have gone. Treat it as a pause rather than a destination and the village repays with cheap coffee, pine-scented air and a view of Montserrat you do not have to queue for. Expect anything more and you will be back on the motorway within the hour, wondering why you left Barcelona in the first place.