Quite soon after arriving in Traiguera, we heard the phrase poco a poco repeated countless times. It means ‘little by little’ – not an unusual phrase to hear in English, but in Spain it takes on quite a different resonance.

Poco a poco comes up in a variety of conversations and situations. When we’re trying to improve our Spanish; how much work we have to complete to create our casa rural; how long it will take to paint the seemingly endless villa exterior; how long official paperwork takes! The soothing answer often includes the phrase poco a poco. Just little by little. You’ll get there. Don’t stress about it. It will get done, but maybe in a different timescale from yours.

This isn’t some euphemism for being lazy or idle. Far from it. At its core is just a simple acceptance that, in spite of what you’d like, things are going at a different pace. Being angry and stressed won’t speed it up, but accepting the pace and working with it keeps your blood pressure down and gets you to the same end result.

But the longer we have lived here, we are realising poco a poco stands for much more than that. It goes to the heart of the way of life here in our little rural community. What the locals value most highly is their quality of life. The time they have with family and friends, time they can spend together in the community, building a social structure which is so cohesive and strong and that pays them back in so many ways, beyond any financial means.

Poco a poco, I’m starting to understand, is about staking out what is truly important in your life. Not the money or the accruing of more possessions (or debt). It captures what emerges from a culture and lifestyle that wants to cement familial bonds, deepen social ties and belong to a community as the priority, and everything else comes second.

One guest this year told us this place was ‘just like heaven, with a special sort of Zen’. High praise indeed and something I think that reflects how we are starting to understand what priorities matter most.

With recent headlines in the UK press about the so-called ‘Silver Exodus’ of 50-somethings leaving the workforce in droves, it seems that more and more of us are starting to see that living our lives to the fullest is about so much more than monetary wealth and work-based priorities.

You may not be ready to take the plunge yourself and put your own life on a different path, not yet. But take a few days to relax here, turn off and tune out from the daily grind and see if you can feel the pull towards something that is life-affirming in a different way.

Poco a poco, we’ll get you there!

Claire & Ed