The idea of sleeping a few meters from a dungeon hidden for centuries can be exciting and even more so if it is part of an exquisitely restored 17th century farmhouse in the Penedès. When history enters the equation, magic happens: the stay at Cal Boter becomes an experience as unique as it is. Its owner is Neus Lluch, who, since she was little, heard her grandparents talk about the existence of that mysterious, albeit tiny, dungeon.
It is one of the many stories found among the stones of this stately home, personally renovated by this Airbnb hostess who, aware of the enormous value that the passage of time has left in it, has wanted to keep all its essence. "In the reform I could not ignore these stones, it was something that I had to leave behind," explains Lluch. An 'incunable' tile, in fact, has a date carved on it: 1689. "We don't know if this is really the origin of the house because there is no one left who can explain it to us," he points out.
In reality, it is the farmhouse itself that is in charge of saying, without words, everything it has seen and heard, as so many other houses do throughout the territory. Javier Bahamonde, president of the Fundación Casas Históricas y Singulares de España, an entity whose objective is to promote and promote the conservation of privately owned historical heritage, knows this well. “They are a reflection of the different past and historical events that led to their construction,” he shares.
“They are also an image of the artistic expression of each moment”, he adds. Although their greatest potential lies perhaps in the fact that, for Bahamonde, "they form an enormous network that reaches every corner, helping to recover depressed or emptied areas through the formation of tourist and cultural circuits." But behind a unique or historic house there is not only history. There is also the enormous effort of an owner who trembles every time he has to face a reform.
The Fundación Casas Históricas y Singulares de España aims to alleviate this effort, “helping owners in the extremely difficult and arduous task of conserving a historic asset. To maintain it, to undertake the necessary works, often complex or expensive", details its president, convinced that "society does not value or is not aware of what it entails". For this reason, “promoting its conservation is not only convenient or good, but it is a duty. The one who destroys his patrimony has little future”, assures Bahamonde.
Historic houses offer a dialogue with time and are, as he defends, a wealth that we cannot give up. For Neus, that wealth is woven from memories that she herself keeps. Like the unmistakable smell of stew that, when she was a child, flooded all the rooms when, to make vedella amb bolets, her great-aunt used up to 48 hours on an old stove. “Never in my life have I eaten another veal like that. She melted in her mouth,” she recalls.
Cal Boter is today a farmhouse divided into two connected houses, whose name comes from the trade of his grandfather's older brother, the heir, a well-known boat maker (boter in Catalan) from the region. She has called the house where her grandfather used to live in Cal Boter de Menescal, which is how veterinarians were formerly known, a profession (now not practiced) from Neus. The second, which occupies stables and a cellar, is Cal Boter del Castell, because it is on Calle del Castell.
It was that 'secondary' house, the one that his father began to reform with the idea of renting it out. Later, she herself picked up the baton by reforming the largest, after completing a master's degree in interior design and decoration. She liked the result so much that she herself would have lived, but she thought of another solution: "Let people come from outside, so they can enjoy this house in seasons and on weekends."
“For me it has been very important that Airbnb has given me this opportunity to be able to share it with the whole world”, he values, adding: “Probably here comes an American who, as they say, has never seen these stones in his life and I It looks fantastic." The traveler who comes to Cal Boter is what we know as family or cultural tourism, more interested in cycling and visiting a nearby winery than in scorching under the sun.
It is a sustainable tourism, which in Spain is even less because the vacation prevails. "The summer season, the countryside or the beach, is more abundant, which is why cultural tourism must be urgently promoted," observes Bahamonde. How? Through different ways. In short: awareness, tax advantages and patronage, a practice that has led Airbnb to donate around 1 million euros to the Fundación Casas Históricas y Singulares de España.
Specifically, through the launch of the Program for the Rehabilitation and Tourism Promotion of Spanish Historical Heritage, aid of up to 100,000 euros may be granted. Another person who knows the urgent need to add as many actors as possible to this task is Jordi Tresserras, president of the Spanish Committee of the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS). "Public administration, owners, companies, civil society and research centers", he lists.
For Tresserras, "cultural tourism is a tool for the conservation of heritage", and it has also been his specialty since 1987. The reason is that, as he observes, in cultural tourism "what is valued is precisely identity, and behind that identity is always the local community.” “The key is for this community to be the leader and promoter of this activation through heritage”, she values.
Neus and Cal Boter's idyll with the Airbnb platform is paradigmatic and illustrates how Covid-19 has also left its mark. “Post pandemic tourism is more cultural, more ecological and responsible. Also more demanding”, says Tresserres. People want to know more and want to interact with heritage, staying in it. "Through housing, heritage is personalized, humanized," he concludes. By staying in them, the tenants reveal themselves as an antidote against the danger that the passage of time entails.
