A passion for walking led Matthew Parris to a great discovery – his new home in the Catalunyan mountains.

If Matthew Parris hadn’t been curious enough to follow a worn-out path in the Spanish Pyrenees one spring morning a few years ago, he wouldn’t be where he is now – waking up to spectacular views of the Collsacabra mountain range from a magnificent medieval masía in the heart of Catalunya. 

From up here, the view stretches over the Ter valley and Montseny mountain chain and in the distance glint the Mediterranean waters of the Costa Brava. A former Tory MP, Parris quit politics in the 1980s to focus on his media career – he is now a regular columnist for The Times, The Spectator and a presenter for BBC Radio 4  –  and also to pour his energy into another project: the renovation of the 16th-century ruined mansion he stumbled across that morning.

It is a moment he has never forgotten. He was hiking along the GR2, one of the Grandes Rutas, the national walking paths that criss-cross Spain, when he noticed two villages on his map separated by an immense cliff. “Surely, I thought, there would be a way on foot, tracing the cliff’s edge. My map suggested a track of some kind,” he says.

After hiking up the cliff for several miles, he came across a rough path but then found something else quite unexpected: “There at the top, with the hills behind, stood l’Avenc ... a ruined house in lonely majesty. How long had the house been here? Five hundred, 1,000 years? The view could hardly have been very different a millennium ago.”

Deserted and succumbing to the ravages of neglect, the three-storey house had a coat of arms and a date, 1559, chiselled into its wall. It had been uninhabited since the 1950s. Parris remembers the day he prised open the solid oak front doors. Large enough to allow men on horses to ride straight in, they were framed by a magnificent stone arch and gave a hint of the grandeur to come. "We expected dereliction of course, and we found it,” he says. “The wooden floors had half rotted away but as we clambered up the remains of a staircase, we realised that this was no farmhouse at all. It was a stately home – a small chateau.”

When, in 1997, l’Avenc was put up for sale, Parris didn’t hesitate. He joined forces with his sister Belinda and her husband Joaquím and bought the place. The cost? £160,000 for the wreck and its 12 acres. A bargain? Perhaps. Years of work to come? Definitely. But Parris was philosophical from the start. “All my life I’ve been biting off more than I can chew,” he says.

However, after signing for the deeds, he admits he went back to take a second look “with the eyes of a cash-strapped owner rather than a star-struck rambler, and realised that, what with a whole roof needing to be replaced, collapsed floors, doors and windows hanging from rotten frames, and no plumbing or electrical power, It was a shambles.”

But what a transformation. This year Parris will celebrate a decade since deciding to buy l’Avenc. The crumbling building has been steadily renovated, and in the process he has learned a whole more about the great house’s history. The oldest part dates back to the 12th century and under the cellar there are remains of a Roman road. Other parts are Gothic, with dramatic, stone-carved windows and arches. They’ve all been preserved, plumbing has been put in, electricity is supplied via solar panels, outbuildings have been transformed into self-catering rental cottages and a swimming pool is being hewn out of the rock. Parris escapes here from his hectic London media work as often as he can – last year he managed 20 visits. “I come for a few days at a time and buy Ryanair flights from Stansted to Girona when they’re cheap,” he says.

Catalunya is a region he has come to love and he is a fervent supporter of its national identity. “Catalunya,” he insists, “is not Spain … There can be no people on earth who are prouder of their country, their language and their culture than Catalans.”

He speaks with some authority. His family moved to the region in the 1970s and his father Leslie ran a factory near the country town of Vic. His parents liked the area so much that they settled, and sent their youngest children to the local school. Three of them, Belinda, Deborah and Mark, have now all married Catalans.

Catalunya, of course, makes no bones about not wanting to be Spanish and it was on the terraces of FC Barcelona that locals kept their separate language alive during Franco’s oppressive regime. Barcelona and Madrid still maintain a long-seated rivalry – as cities and as home to Spain’s two top football clubs – and while Madrid may be the country’s financial and political powerhouse, Barcelona is definitely its artistic soul.

Last year Catalunya voted overwhelmingly for a new charter of autonomy and, shortly after, the Catalan parliament moved to ban bullfighting. The significance of outlawing this blood sport was huge: it meant disowning the national symbol of Spain and refreshing the distinctiveness of the Catalan identity with its roots going back to the Middle Ages.
Parris is keen to promote the side of Catalunya few people see. “I might be spitting in the wind,” he says, “but if people ventured away from the Costa Brava beaches, they would be amazed at what they would find.”

Surprisingly, few tourists do go more than a few kilometres inland but if they did, they would discover stunning mountain scenery, natural parks and valleys dotted with Romanesque churches. “My family and I belong to the hillybilly side of Catalunya … More than in any city you will find Catalunya in the countryside, the towns and villages, the rural homesteads and little stone churches, the rhythm of life across the great swath of valleys, mountains, plains and forests.” Rural Catalunya, he says, is a secret waiting to be discovered …

L’Avenc, two hours from Barcelona and Girona airports, offers self-catering cottages for rent.