Three days in Sella

Two weeks ago we spent three full days in Sella. It was a working trip, the kind where you walk the same rooms a dozen times and stand in doorways imagining the light at different hours. We were there to settle the last of the bigger decisions before the license applications go in, and to sit with the building long enough to be sure of them.

A house on the Plaça Major

The building we are restoring sits right on the Plaça Major, in the middle of the village. For most of its life it was a large family home, and part of what we are doing is helping it into its next chapter without erasing the one before. We are working with an architect based in Valencia who shares that instinct: keep what gives the place its character, respect the property as it stands, and adapt the inside with care so it can hold a new kind of life. It is slow work, and we would not want it any other way.

An easy welcome

What stayed with us most was not the plans. It was the people. We were met with an open, unforced warmth, and Sella turns out to be a village in good spirits. You feel it just walking through: neighbours talking in the shade, a nod from a doorway, a festive, easy rhythm to daily life that is worth slowing down to match. By the end of three days the square already felt a little like ours.

Bread, and a table across the square

Some of the best moments were the simplest. The village has a wood-fired bakery, a proper forn de llenya, Forn Santamaria, turning out bread of a kind you rarely find any more. You can taste the oven in it. And directly across from the house is Ca Xaro, where we ate more than once: no frills, completely honest, the sort of place that serves huevos rotos con jamón and reminds you there is nothing to improve on. It is hard to feel more at home, or more in Spain, than at a table like that.

The pace of the village

Sella sits at around 430 metres in the hills of Alicante, tucked under the Aitana, the highest range in the province. That setting shapes the pace of everything. Mornings belong to the mountains and the roads that climb into them; afternoons stretch out. Climbers, cyclists and walkers pass through on their way to the crags, cols and trails, and the village takes them in without fuss. It is a place that rewards staying a while rather than passing quickly, which is, in the end, the whole idea behind what we are building.

If you want to know more about the landscape around the village, the climbing, the cycling and the trails into the Aitana, we have gathered it on our Sella page. And we will keep sharing the project here as it moves from paper into stone. Three days was not enough. We are already counting down to the next.