Martorelles

The church bell in Martorelles strikes two, and the only other sound is a scooter disappearing towards Granollers. From the stone bench outside the 18th-century ajuntament you can see the whole sweep of the Vallès plain: cereal fields fraying into warehouse roofs, the distant glint of the Mediterranean when the tramontana wind scrubs the sky clean. The village sits just 96 m above sea level—low enough to feel the sea breeze, high enough to escape Barcelona’s midsummer fug.

Most visitors barrel past on the AP-7, bound for the Costa Brava or the Pyrenees, which is exactly why the place still works the way it does. Old men in boinas argue over dominoes on the plaza de la Vila, the bakery sells coca flatbread still warm from the brick oven, and Monday’s newspaper hangs on a wooden peg behind the bar. No one is trying to sell you anything.

A pocket-sized centre that refuses to grow up

The historic core is two streets wide. Carrer Major narrows so sharply that delivery vans fold in their mirrors; upstairs balconies almost touch. Half-timbered beams poke through 19th-century plaster, and the parish church of Sant Genís keeps watch with its stubby Romanesque tower. Inside, the cool darkness smells of candle wax and the previous Sunday’s lilies. Restoration work in 2018 uncovered medieval fresco fragments—now protected behind glass and lit by a 50-cent coin in the meter.

Walk south for three minutes and you’re out among vegetable plots fenced with bedsteads and rusty bicycles. The transition is abrupt: urban to rural in the length of a cricket pitch. A signed footpath, the Camí de les Guixeres, strikes off across the fields towards Montornès. It’s level, stroller-friendly, and in April the edges are a mess of poppies and wild fennel. After 40 minutes you reach an irrigation pond where night herons fish between the reeds; there’s no café, no car park, just a stone bench and a view back to the bell tower you started from.

Eating (and closing) times

Spanish school hours dictate village life. Everything shuts between 14:00 and 17:00, including the tiny tourist office. If you arrive hungry at half past two, the only sure bet is the bar de la piscina by the municipal pool, open June–September, which does toasted baguette sandwiches and cans of Estrella for €2. The rest of the year you’re hostage to the clock.

Can Raiguer, the top-rated restaurant on the single traffic-light-striped terrace, serves a three-course menú del día for €14. Expect grilled chicken, chips and a half-bottle of house red poured without ceremony. Vegetarians get a roasted * escalivada* of aubergine and peppers; vegans should ask for pa amb tomàquet sense all—toasted bread rubbed with tomato and olive oil, minus the traditional garlic. Pudding is usually crema catalana burnt to order with a plumber’s blowtorch.

Evening meals start late. Order before 21:00 and you’ll dine alone among empty chairs; the place fills up abruptly at 22:15 when the commuter train from Barcelona disgorges its cargo. Book if it’s a Thursday—locals treat Thursday as the unofficial start of the weekend.

Flat trails, not mountain drama

The guidebooks that ignore Martorelles do so because the landscape refuses to perform. There are no crags, no ravines, no miradors with heart-stopping drops. Instead you get a lattice of farm tracks designed for campesinos on mopeds. Hire a bike in nearby Mollet for €18 a day and you can stitch together a 25-km loop that threads irrigation ditches, abandoned masías and one surprisingly rowdy donkey. Gradient gain: 120 m. Bring water; fountains are seasonal and the summer sun bounces off the pale clay.

Serious walkers treat the village as a staging post on the GR-92 long-distance footpath, which passes 3 km to the east. A taxi from the ajuntament to the trailhead at Santa Maria de Martorelles costs €12 and saves a trudge along the BV-5001, a road with no pavement and drivers who treat the speed limit as sarcasm.

When the fiesta starts, the village doubles

The August Festa Major turns 5,000 residents into 10,000 overnight. Streets are strung with bunting made from recycled rice sacks, and the brass band rehearses sardanas on the balcony of the old people’s home. At 23:00 a foam cannon fills the plaça with bubbles two metres deep; children disappear, shrieking, and emerge 20 minutes later like snowmen. The local colla castellera builds a modest six-tier human tower—nothing like the death-defying nine-storey constructions of Valls, but impressive when you recognise your hotel receptionist at the bottom.

If you prefer quieter spectacle, come on 23 April for Sant Jordi. The single bookstall on the plaça sells dog-eared Catalan classics next to wilting roses wrapped in foil. Elderly women queue to have 1950s copies of Mercè Rodoreda signed by grand-nephews who have become accidental authors.

Getting here (and away again)

From the UK it’s almost too easy: fly to Barcelona-El Prat, catch the R2 Nord train towards Maçanet, hop off at Montmeló after 25 minutes, then phone Taxi Martorelles (WhatsApp works, +34 600 123 456). The last 6 km costs €12–15 and seven minutes. Total journey from Gatwick gate to village square: under three hours, often quicker than reaching the Cotswolds on a Friday afternoon.

Driving is faster still—leave the hire-car desk at 14:00 and you can be sipping vermut by 14:45—but remember that the narrow centre is a residents-only zone policed by camera. Park on the broad BV-5001 where it’s free, unlimited and a three-minute walk to anywhere.

Accommodation stock is punishingly small: two Airbnb rooms above family flats and the functional Hotel Campus on the edge of town, built for Formula 1 fans attending the nearby Circuit de Catalunya. Rates drop to €55 mid-week once the grand-prix circus has left. The hotel breakfast is forgettable; stroll to the bakery for ensaimada and decent coffee at half the price instead.

The honest verdict

Martorelles will not change your life. It offers no epiphany, no brag-worthy summit, no ruin to fill a memory card. What it does give is a calibration of scale: a reminder that less than 20 km from Barcelona’s cruise-ship chaos you can still hear a single bicycle chain clacking down an alley. Stay for half a day, buy a loaf still steaming, walk one field edge and catch the 16:42 train back to the city. That is exactly enough.