Where silence is the real luxury

You reach Off Grid at the end of a narrowing lane north from Maià de Montcal. You’re certain you’ve taken a wrong turn. You haven’t. The road delivers you to Mas Salvanera, a 17th-century masía in the hills of Garrotxa, opened as a rural hotel with ten rooms in September 2025.

Who's —— behind it

Gerard Greene is the man behind Off Grid. He co-founded YOTEL - the capsule hotels in Times Square, Heathrow, Schiphol, Singapore. Decades of compact, urban, fast-paced hospitality.

Then he walked away. In 2024, he found this collapsed masía by accident. Bought it. Spent a year restoring it into what he calls “Something beautiful and meaningful, in the sun, with mountains, sea, and nature.”

Berta runs daily operations. She spent years managing five-star branded hotels. “Those places teach you standards,” she says. "But arriving here, I realised how much I had to learn, and how much luxury, real luxury, there is in switching off and stopping the time." That sentence is the spine of the place.

Berta greets us in the courtyard and shows us around like it’s her childhood home. Slowly, and full of stories.

The —— restoration

Ariadna Puigdomenech, a Girona designer, led the work. The project brief rejected gimmicks or any imposed design. They wanted to uncover what was already there.

Most masía renovations sand away history - walls too smooth, light too even. Off Grid feels archaeological. You feel, walking through it, that you've stepped into a working time machine. Except everything is more comfortable than it was the first time around.

“More than refurbishment, we did an unfinishing,” Berta says in the largest suite. Walls stripped to oldest limewash, which lets stone breathe. Hand-cut tiles from La Bisbal d’Empordà, the ceramic capital of the region. Reclaimed terracotta, local stone sinks. Original furniture - desks, armchairs, paintings - stripped, reupholstered, and put back.

The —— three floors

The main house spans three levels, each revealing how Catalan farms once functioned.

Ground floor - once the animal shed. Low ceilings, heavy stone, shared heat with rooms above. Now an open kitchen and 12-seat communal table for breakfast and family dinners.

First floor—original kitchen. Iron hooks still hang where meats and herbs dried. Now a lounge with pool views.

Second floor—the house’s most striking room. Open fireplace lounge with a library gallery overhead. Sit below, look up at someone reading above. Medieval geometry, modern comfort. Evenings end here without planning.

The —— sourcing

New items follow the same ethic.

The mattresses come from Sivana, a small workshop in Murcia. They're made entirely from natural fabrics (wool, linen, cotton, including the threading) and they're heavy. Sivana cannot supply large hotels. The owner came to visit recently and mentioned something that stayed with Berta: many of his employees are people who can't work in conventional environments because they were born with allergies that prevent contact with chemicals or pollution. Sivana is a place where they can.

The bed linen comes from BeKume, founded by Nuria Gómez in Mataró, an hour down the coast. It's 100% organic cotton, but cut and woven for the look and feel of a t-shirt rather than the crisp, super-starched sheets that hotels default to.

The bathroom products are from Olively, a company from Andorra started after the pandemic by Ivon - a former professional golfer who, during lockdown, returned to her family's olive grove and began experimenting with olive oil and essential oils. The scents come from Shizen’na, a small perfumer in Girona working only with essential oils. Off Grid is in the process of developing its own scent with them.

Each of these suppliers take effort to remain local. Berta recalls finding them through serendipity, but always with a qualifier - as something earned through looking very, very intensely. “I didn’t know I was looking for them,” she says, “but there they were.”

The —— rhythm

The thing we didn't expect, and the thing that stays with us most clearly afterwards, is the silence. Off Grid is full when we visit, or close to it. There are guests in the pool, guests at the long table, guests on bikes coming up the lane. None of this seems to make any noise. You can sit at the edge of the pool with the house at your back and hear, in order: the wind, an insect, water moving somewhere, your own breath. That's it. The estate has a kind of acoustic geometry to it that absorbs sound without making the place feel empty. We've stayed in plenty of rural hotels that go quiet at night. We can't think of one that stays this quiet at lunchtime.

Everything runs at your pace. Breakfast spreads slowly on the side of the pool, whenever you're ready. The kitchen sources KM0 - all ingredients from 1-2km away, plus the permaculture garden, which is in its second season and starting to deliver. Dinners happen family-style at the long table when you want them. Connection sparks naturally when phones stay away and real conversations take over.

Three lounges stay open all day with honesty bars stocked with natural wines, Hopsters IPA from nearby Besalú, free coffee and water. Pour yourself a local beer at 3pm or midnight - no asking, no strict hours, no schedule to follow. Just take what you need when it feels right.

WiFi works reliably if you want it. No room TVs. No room phones.

Guests choose their flow: cycling (Gerard has mapped 30+ routes from the door through Girona’s pro cyclist foothills), Pyrenees hiking trails, yoga studio retreats, or nothing at all. Costa Brava’s 35 minutes away. Cadaqués an hour. The French border just over.

Rooted in —— permaculture

The newest project is the farm. Berta is, as she puts it, learning constantly, and excited in a way that makes other people laugh, because the things she's excited about are so grounded. Three speeds of compost. Why orange peels need to stay separate. Why eggshells go in a pile of their own. As she puts it, "It's overwhelming at the beginning. But then when you get into it and realise what's happening and what's going to happen, you just want to do more. And often it's only that you don't know."

The garden is patient work. They are starting to grow some of their own vegetables, and there will be fruit eventually, but neither can be rushed. The wider sustainability picture follows the same logic. Natural spring water on tap. On-site composting. Solar-ready, with full renewable energy and expanded rainwater harvesting in the plans. The aim, she says, is to leave the place better than they found it. "It's not for us. It's for those to come."