Canet de Mar is one hour from Barcelona

Canet de Mar is a town right in the middle of the Catalonian region of Spain (the Northeast) on the Baelaric sea. When it was sunny the beach was heavenly, warm, and the sand large-grained and gritty. I got lots of Spanish practice in and we really enjoyed spending a little over a month in our little town of Canet.

What this meant was we didn’t spend nearly as much time in Barcelona as Canet, but that was ok. Canet had many riches of its own and quite a bit of local history. A famous architect was based here for the period of Modernism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, his name was Lluis Montanech Domaner. Read more about him and Canet de Mar here.

We spent a lot of time in our rental house which had lots of space (a patio on the roof with an enclosed and an open area that was also amazing when it was sunny and warm outside) and had fires every night. We had a hill we named “Kindling Hill” where we went and got kindling, and our host delivered us wood every week.

My Spanish came in handy

It was great fun talking to shop owners, everyone had a story to tell. The owner of the electronics store said his uncle lived above the dentist office on the end of our little street (small world!) and another said she discovered her building was very old and beautiful under temporary walls a previous tenant had put up. We were even able to go to the doctor for my son (he’s got some issue that we can’t pin down, but anything that’s real to a child needs to be followed up!)

Politics here are in the open but seem to bubble under the surface. I managed to have a great philosophical and political discussion with my barber without either of us getting rude or impolite or impatient; he was happy to have my kind and non judgemental ear.
Amazing things like this can happen when you open your eyes and ears, and can speak the language. And as I said about Sevilla I could easily live in Spain; the people are so deep, warm and friendly and passionate, and keen to “charlar” (chat) at any family gathering or over coffee.