The mill wheels turn thanks to the force of the water in the reservoir behind it. If the power went out, we wouldn't notice. Just like in 1521, when the little house we're in was built. We're in the Bianya Valley, where there used to be 50 mills. Every important house had one. The building has windows so the miller could see when the water arrived. Halters located on the spillway would alert him. It was time to take advantage of the water's full force to grind. Buckwheat, corn, barley.

Made from shortcrust pastry, shaped like a crescent moon, and filled with cream. That's the flaona, one of our Garrotxa desserts that, unlike the chicharrones cake or the aniseed roscón, has largely fallen into oblivion in recent decades. But now Lluís Riera, who has been preparing it every Friday at Cacau Pastisseria for the past 18 years, has set out to revive it. And he's doing it in style. "On the first Sunday of March, we will celebrate the first Aplec de la Flaona (Flaona Gathering). We will meet in the Plaça Major of Olot at 9 a.m. wearing barretinas (traditional Catalan caps), sashes, and seven-striped espadrilles. We will climb to the top of the Sant Francesc volcano accompanied by folk and traditional music. And at the top, we will eat flaones and drink a sip of ratafia.

Garrochina chef Martina Puigvert is one of the great figures of the Catalan culinary sceneAt just 30 years old, he is already head chef of the highly renowned Les Cols de Olot restaurant, with two Michelin stars, founded by his parents, Manel Puigvert and Fina Puigdevall, in 1990. He has just published his first book, Living nature (NOW Books), in which, besides sharing some of her most treasured recipes, she skillfully conveys a genuine way of understanding life and cooking as two inseparable pillars linked to the land and nature. The book is essentially a guide to ten dishes and preparations, based on tradition but with a modern perspective, which, with an exquisite visual presentation, evokes and paints an authentic sensory journey through the volcanic landscape of La Garrotxa.

You don't need a ticket to Iceland or a rocket to Mars. This summer you can travel to another planet without leaving Catalonia and discover places that seem otherworldly. We're talking about places that don't fit the typical postcard, neither the gentle green of the Pyrenees, nor the Mediterranean gold of the coves of the Empordà. They are spaces that seem to have emerged from a dream, a fairy tale, or a distant planet. And yet, they are right here, close to home.

When my mother was widowed, she was 42. My brother and I, in a span of just two years, left the nest to go to university and never returned. From having a full life with others, in a short period of time, amidst many unexpected changes, she had to get used to living alone. She found ways to have plans she used to make with her family: traveling, going to the theater... Over time, she's formed a group of friends who share something in common: they're also widows, single or separated. That's why my eyes opened wide when another widow excitedly told me around Christmas about the initiative they'd just launched in Olot and had extended to the whole of La Garrotxa: a group that unites women like those who had found my mother with one clear goal: to never feel alone again.

It was the night of December 31 when the medical director of the Hospital de Olot, Jaume Heredia, received an urgent call from those responsible for the center. They had detected that two professionals working in the covid unit had tested positive and that there were two non-covid patients with symptoms. "All the alarms went off: in six months we had had virtually no cases of transmission and, suddenly, two workers and two patients had been infected", Heredia recalls, who explains that they followed the protocol and made a screening throughout the hospital. The result: ten patients and three professionals infected, which increased the following days to seventeen patients and eleven workers.