Tablet10: Consolación

The latest issue of our Tablet10 magazine is here. Each week we’ve been spotlighting a different hotel from Volume 9 — and we saved one of the best for last: Consolación, in the Matarraña, about midway between Barcelona and Madrid.

Old meets new in the most dramatic of styles; these precise, geometric modernist villas are placed right next to a 14th-century hermitage, which certainly heightens the contrasts. We spoke to co-owner Ignacio Mas de Xaxas about the process of becoming a first-time hotelier, and the motivations behind Consolación.

Tablet: How did you get into the hotel business?

Ignacio Mas de Xaxas: We own a business called British Summer. We organize language programs overseas. We love to travel, and we have been traveling around the world, and a lot of times you find these places and you say, I can live here. Maybe a beach in Brazil. I can stay here and set up a bar or a restaurant, a small place, and spend the rest of my life, you know?

You realize that after traveling around the world for a long time, you can have this magic place just around the corner. Some people told us about Matarraña, which is the area where the hotel is based. So we decided to go there and see how the area was. It’s only 250 kilometers from Barcelona, but the nature, the landscape, it’s amazing. We fell in love with the place, and we said, let’s do it. It took us five years, and then finally last year we opened the hotel.

Coming to it as people who love to travel, you obviously know what you like and what you don’t like. What sort of hotel did you set out to create here?

We wanted something very personal. We had a very clear idea about what we wanted to build, regarding the architecture. These cubes, with very good materials, classic materials, like wood, like glass, like cement. We wanted something small, something very minimalist, but sophisticated in the way of Asian philosophy.

There is a book from Tanizaki called In Praise of Shadows. It’s a small book, regarding architecture, the light, about Japanese philosophy regarding the food. It’s an amazing book. Very simple to read, and I love the philosophy.

We wanted something sophisticated, but in the sense that something minimalist is sophisticated, and at the same time, it’s luxury. But it’s an odd type of luxury. We don’t want a place where people come and we have twenty people who are going to serve you. We wanted a place where anything can happen. If I want to have dinner at a table which is outside, we can organize it. If you want a gin and tonic at three o’clock in the morning, we do it.

For the rest of this interview (and much more), send for a copy of the new Tablet10 magazine. Like this feature? Sign up for email alerts and you’ll be the first to know about new content.