Tim Holt wasn’t born to the sherry business, like so many of his competitors, but that hasn’t stopped this Englishman chasing his dreams.

You might think that cattle ranching and farming fish and crocodiles across three continents would be enough to turn a man to drink. So it proved for Tim Holt, though his was a decision to make a career in the wine trade as opposed to losing himself at the bottom of a sherry bottle.
It was a move that – understandably – he has never regretted: two decades later he manages the export arm of a brand-leading sherry, lives in a beautiful seaside town where he can indulge his love of sailing and has a Spanish wife and two children.

Behind the Hotel Claude - a haven of hotel chic in Marbella’s enchanting Old Town - lies a tale of dreams come true for the London based Willmes family.

Sister and brother Desiree and Franz Willmes, who have both made it as brokers in the City in London, have taken trading places to new heights. At the start of July 2007 they realized an ambition to build a new life in Spain when they opened the doors to Hotel Claude.

An exquisite boutique hotel across the street from one of Marbella’s picturesque churches, in the heart of the jet-set resort’s earthy Old Town, Hotel Claude is the result of a painstaking five-year labour of love.

Paul Richardson left Britain to follow his heart: learning, living and loving Spanish food.

“People move to Spain for all sorts of reasons. The usual suspects are the climate, the lifestyle, the property prices, or the all-round simpatía of the Spanish people and their culture. In the 16-odd years since I left the UK I must have been asked thousands of times the question: why? And the simplest answer I can give, the one that comes closest to the truth, is “the food”.

Have you had a great travel experience or fantastic holiday in Spain?

This is your chance to vote for your favourite city or event and nominate an airline, hotel, Parador or travel company that has made your holiday a success.

The winning companies will be announced in the January edition and the prizewinners will be given a special bottle of  Jaume Codorniu, the Codorniu winery’s top Cava.

The peaceful rural town of Tolosa is home to the most memorable kind of bean feast, as Richard Robinson discovers.


Up on the main stage, clouds of steam rise into the autumn air from rows of steel tureens, set upon the immaculate white covers of long trestle tables. A team of official chefs is in attendance, continually lifting lids, checking the bubbling contents, stirring and occasionally tasting. Beans are on the menu – the celebrated beans of this Basque town of Tolosa, and each tureen contains the product of a different grower, cooked to the same exacting specification.

It is Bean Week, a celebration of the luscious legume, a week-long programme of traditional Basque music, dance, rural sports and rustic pursuits. Above all, it is about the competitive cooking and enthusiastic consumption of the bean itself. The famous gastronomy of the Basque Country is based, in large measure, on the distinctive products of the countryside, and Tolosa’s Semana de la Alubia is just one example of the food-related celebrations that are held in all corners of the Basque Country throughout the year.

Good food, folk festivals and a party atmosphere each provide a good excuse for a holiday, and the three together provide a powerful draw. It was Bean Week that brought me on the ferry to Bilbao, but it would be more than just beans that would sustain me through the next few days of festivities. Skirting the drab suburbs of the region’s biggest city and port, I followed the signs for San Sebastian, or Donostia to give its Basque name. I would be returning later to sample the urban delights of Bilbao, its medieval centre and signature modern art gallery – The Guggenheim. Now I was Tolosa-bound, an hour’s drive to the west, through the wooded hills and past historic towns with names like Durango and Elgoibar. Reaching the outskirts of San Sebastian I turned inland to follow the deep valley of the Oria river, a few miles inland to Tolosa.

Mona Arain Crites, her husband Stefan and their children may have made the move from the middle of New York to the middle of nowhere, but they don’t miss their hectic world in the slightest

“A few years ago, we couldn’t have imaged ourselves living in a small town in the mountains of Andalucía. It would have seemed about as far from our existence as you could get without leaving the western hemisphere.

Stefan and I met in New York and we were living metropolitan life to the full. He was working as a chef in a succession of the city’s top restaurants while I was selling my own line of clothing in a boutique in an up and coming neighbourhood of Brooklyn.

But as is often the way, everything changed when our son, Casim, came along. Suddenly, our tiny apartment didn’t seem like such a good place to bring up children. And when I realised I would never be able to let Casim out on his own until he was 16 the decision was effectively made: it was time to leave New York.

Stefan and I both grew up in suburbia – me in Ascot, down the road from Windsor, him in Columbus, Ohio. And the one thing we knew was that we didn’t want to go back. It was the middle of New York or the middle of nowhere. We weren’t even sure which country we wanted to live in. We thought about Goa – that’s where my mother’s family came from. But India just seemed too far from everyone.
It soon became obvious that Spain was the right place for us. I had been holidaying at my parents’ property in Marbella since I was three and spoke the language fluently, while Stefan had a huge interest in Spanish cuisine and, of course, the culture was attractive. So three years ago we left New York behind and arrived in Spain, using my parents’ apartment as a base while we thought about our future.

Some time before leaving the States I had closed my business and had taken on work as a retail consultant. But since arriving in Spain my work has been largely linked to Stefan’s – I was ‘front-of-house’ while Stefan was chef at two very good restaurants in the Marbella area.
We had never intended to stay on the Costa del Sol, and spent almost 18 months looking for the right place to buy. We saw 140 different properties and almost signed contracts on seven, including an ex-monastery in Velez Málaga. But something was wrong with all of them.

Eventually we saw this venta, with its bar, dining room and beautiful shaded terrace overlooking the lake at Zahara de la Sierra, up in the mountains of Cádiz province. The town is small and has a hilltop castle and the nearest decent-sized settlement is Ronda, half an hour away. But this was it. We realised when we saw the property that we could really make something of it and after checking everything was in order we made a deal and took over at the beginning of 2006.
I suppose our timing could have been better. I gave birth to our daughter, Mahalia, six weeks later so it wasn’t the easiest start to life here. But we had to get on with making a living and that’s what we did.

The Tattersall family moved to southern Spain to spend more time together, but achieving their dream wasn’t always child’s play.

“Moving to Spain from Britain is a big upheaval in anyone’s life but, arguably, we’ve been through far bigger changes since we arrived here in late 2002. Gareth and I grew up and met on Anglesey, and we were happy enough living there. I was a nurse and midwife working in the district general hospital and Gareth was a technician at the island’s nuclear power plant.

Our holidays were often spent at my parents’ property in Mijas on the Costa del Sol, but it was only when we started travelling inland and really exploring Spain that the country got into our blood. Places like Seville and Córdoba can’t fail to inspire, and we really fell for the food, the culture, the people and especially the way of life we discovered away from the heavily populated tourist areas.

We liked the fact that Spain seemed to lag behind the UK in all the right ways. OK, so things took longer and there was lots more bureaucracy, but you could walk down the street without feeling threatened, and just the way people behaved towards each other was more open and friendly.

We started thinking about relocating, but everything was put on hold when our son, Ben, was born seven years ago. We thought we’d have to abandon our dreams but after a while we realised his arrival had given us even more incentive to move: we wanted a better childhood for him than he could get in Britain.

Keeping and killing a pig to feed the family for a year is a tradition that is dying out in modern Catalunya, although some are still keeping the old customs alive

Quite what drew crowds of people to turn out for public executions in the past has always mystified me. Yet here I was, bumping down a dusty farm track in northern Catalunya to witness just such an event. Okay, in this case the condemned was a pig but it didn’t make the prospect of watching its demise any more appealing. Not that we hadn’t been warned. When Quim Vidal, whose parents own Mas Aleix farm, outside the village of Bàscara, in the Alt Empordà, invited us to join his family for the annual slaughter of a pig, he had hinted that it might be better to skip the first day.

The custom of killing a pig to provide a family with meat and sausages for the coming year is an old tradition in Catalunya, and one that involves everyone from grandparents down to young children. Although health and hygiene restrictions now limit the practice to the countryside, it used to be commonplace in towns and villages where livestock was kept and fattened. Various Catalan friends with rural ties, including a hairdresser and a schoolteacher, told us their families still gather every December to help with the annual ritual.

Since our household had tucked into its fair share of juicy Catalan sausages and platters of cold meats - botifarra and embotit – it only seemed right that we saw for ourselves where they came from. While the occasions are social events and usually held over a weekend, the sheer scale of work involved in preparing the sausages means that everyone has to muck in to get the job done. The reward is a gift of fresh fare from a “free range” pig, untainted by the industrial process that churns out most of Spain’s meat products.

Win a Trip to Barcelona

Codorniu and Spain magazine are offering one lucky Spain magazine reader and a friend the chance to win an indulgent trip to Barcelona, home of Codorniu, a sparkling wine from Spain, made using an elaborate and traditional method the same as that used to make Champagne.

Your trip will include a VIP tour and tasting at the stunning Codorniu winery in the hills of Penedes and a private tour of Barcelona with an English-speaking guide. The modernist Codorniu winery is now a national historic monument and was designed by Puir i Cadafalch, a student of Gaudi. You will stay at the 5 star Hotel Neri in the fashionable Barri Gotic of Barcelona. A Gothic palace tucked neatly away on the delightful Placa Felip Neri near the cathedral, it’s fast gaining a reputation as one of the most romantic places in the city and was recently occupied by actor John Malkovich for a month while he was appearing in his play Hysteria at a local theatre.

 
Leah Tilbury was given just one day to decide whether to buy Las Banderas on Ibiza, but she didn’t hesitate. Now it’s a regular haunt for Europe’s fashion set

WHEN Leah Tilbury was offered the chance to take over a tumbledown property in Formentera, an island off southern Ibiza, she had only 24 hours to make a decision. As a mother of two young children happily settled in Ibiza with her husband John, the prospect of uprooting the family, relocating to a different island and setting up a business was not something she had previously considered. However, she instinctively felt it would be wrong to say no – and without a moment’s hesitation she accepted.
Six years on, the spur-of-the-moment decision has paid off. The property has been transformed into the colourful Las Banderas, a bohemian-chic beach restaurant and bed and breakfast, with a loyal crowd of glamorous followers.
“It has been a lot of hard work and a very steep learning curve but we have no regrets,” smiles Leah as she surveys their creation. “I have loved the past six years.”
It was at the age of six weeks that Leah was first introduced to Ibizan life, when her parents moved to the island with her, and her sister Charlotte. Her British artist father Lance and her mother Patsy – a PA to the actor Terry-Thomas – had met and fallen in love in (and with) Ibiza during the island’s hippy 1960s heyday.
And so Leah, now 33, enjoyed a suitably colourful upbringing, dotted with bohemian house parties and a stream of unusual and eccentric visitors, ranging from Ronnie Wood to Freddie Mercury.
“It was a wonderful childhood as we had so much freedom and met so many interesting characters,” she says. “Ibiza was very different then to how you see it now. It was very arty, bohemian and musical and attracted some very well-known people. I remember Sarah Ferguson coming and taking me go-karting on one occasion.”