Lliçà d'Amunt

The breakfast trays leave the kitchen at 07:30 sharp. By 08:00 the dining room at Can Caponet sounds like a Surrey garden centre: Home-Counties vowels negotiating the day’s mileage to Montmeló, yesterday’s lap times, tomorrow’s supermarket stop in Granollers. Nobody mentions the village itself; Lliçà d'Amunt is simply the quiet postcode that lets them avoid coastal hotel prices while keeping the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya eleven minutes up the road.

That is the deal here. The place works as an off-switch rather than a spotlight, a dormitory folded into the Vallès crease between the AP-7 and the first pine-covered ridges. At 145 m above sea-level it is high enough to lose the sea fog that clogs Barcelona’s airport, low enough to feel no different from the city’s outer suburbs. Terraced houses built in the 1990s give way to fields that still grow onions for the wholesalers of Mercabarna, then to estates called “Vall Paradís” where the only paradisiacal element is the silence after 23:00.

Drive in from exit 13 and the first impression is functional: a roundabout, a petrol station, a Lidl. Keep going and the old centre finally appears, two short streets anchored by the church of Sant Julià. The building is medieval in footprint, 19th-century in dress: neo-Gothic façade, barrel tiles, a single bell that marks the quarter-hour for elderly residents who no longer trust wristwatches. Step inside and you find a cool darkness smelling of wax and floor disinfectant, plus a retable whose paint flaked off long before anyone thought of ticketed entry. There is no gift shop, no multilingual panel, only a printed sheet in Catalan taped to the pulpit. Photography is allowed; flash is frowned upon. Stay five minutes and you will have seen it properly.

Across the plaça the bar opens at six for espresso and gossip. Order a cafè amb llet and the waiter brings it with a paper sachet of sugar already on the saucer—standard practice, not a comment on your accent. The terrace faces a row of 1970s flats whose ground floors used to be barns; if you want timber beams and geranium pots you have turned up twenty years too late. What you do get is the daily soundtrack of a working village: scooters, schoolchildren arguing about football, the click of retractable dog leads as locals head for the Torrent de Can Cabanyes.

That stream is the nearest thing to an attraction brochure. A five-minute stroll from the church, the path drops into a shallow valley where water runs only after heavy rain. Holm oaks and stone pines provide shade, benches appear every hundred metres, and the occasional information board shows dragonflies you will probably miss. The loop takes forty minutes at English strolling speed, ninety if you stop to photograph every moss-covered wall. Signage is intermittent—one arrow points left, the next has been twisted 180° by bored teenagers—so keep an eye on the church tower if your sense of direction fails after cider.

Beyond the stream the grid of rural lanes begins. These are the “soft hiking” routes the council promotes: flat gravel tracks linking Lliçà with the neighbouring dormitories of Parets and Montmeló. A circular ride on a hired bike from the petrol station (€18 a day, leave your passport) can be finished before lunch, provided you remember that Catalan farmers regard the concept of a public footpath as quaint. Expect gates, barking dogs, and the smell of slurry in spring. Take water; the only fountain marked on the map ran dry in 2022.

Come back hungry and you will discover the other reason British visitors forgive the architecture. Can Caponet’s breakfast is already legendary—black pudding discs the size of coasters, botifarra sausages split and grilled, toast thick enough to support the local honey that sets like concrete overnight. One plate and you will skip lunch, which is fortunate because by 15:00 the village closes. August is worse: even the bakery pulls down its shutter for a three-week brevity. Barcelona is 25 minutes south if you crave life; otherwise stock up in the morning and plan a siesta.

Evenings belong to the square again. Calçot season—February to March—draws the few foodies who have read the online forums. The ritual is simple: charcoal grill, newspaper bundles of spring onions, romesco sauce that stains everything it touches. The farmhouse restaurant on the road to Granollers provides bibs and plastic gloves; first-timers still leave smelling of smoke. The rest of the year menus retreat to grilled chicken, chips, and the local cava that tastes like prosecco with better acidity. A bottle rarely tops €14, so nobody complains about the laminated menu.

Festivals punctuate the calendar with noise the village normally avoids. Sant Jordi on 23 April turns the main street into an open-air bookstall: men clutching roses, women weighed down by novels, primary-school castellers practising tiny human towers against the church wall. Late August brings the Fiesta Mayor—fire-run devils, brass bands, bouncy castles, and a fairground ride that folds out of a lorry like Transformer origami. Book accommodation early if you need the weekend; otherwise flee to the coast before the fireworks start at midnight.

Practicalities are straightforward. Fly to Barcelona, pick up a car, head north on the C-33. Public transport exists—a train to Granollers then a taxi—but reviewers on British forums call it “a day-half gone in waiting rooms”. If you stay near the motorway request a back-room; the AP-7 never sleeps. Air-conditioning is non-negotiable in July; nights hover around 24°C and the old stone walls act like storage heaters. Winter is mild, occasionally frosty, and quiet enough to hear that single church bell from your pillow.

Leave without expectations and Lliçà d'Amunt passes an afternoon agreeably. Treat it as Barcelona’s antechamber rather than a destination and the logic holds: beds cost half coastal rates, breakfast outranks anything on the Ramblas, and the drive to the airport is 45 minutes with no toll queues. Just don’t arrive hunting for a hidden gem—you will drive straight past the turning, exactly as the locals prefer.