The sat nav gave up on us just past Amposta, which should have been my first clue that this holiday was going to be one of those stories. "Recalculating," it kept saying, as if repeating the word might magic a road into existence where there was nothing but dust and orange groves. My partner, ever the optimist, insisted we were "nearly there." We were not nearly there. We were, in fact, circling the same irrigation ditch for the third time while a dog watched us with what I can only describe as professional disappointment.

We eventually found Alcanar by following an old chap on a moped who seemed to sense our distress. He wore no helmet, only a flat cap, and smoked what I suspect was his tenth cigarette of the morning. Every fifty yards he would look back, catch my eye in the rearview mirror, and grin as if we were all in on some tremendous joke. When he finally pointed to a narrow lane and zoomed off with a wave, I felt like I'd passed some kind of test. Whether I'd passed or failed remained to be seen.

The property itself sat tucked between two larger houses, a modest little place with terracotta pots and a lemon tree that had clearly seen better decades. Before I could even unclick my seatbelt, a woman appeared from next door. She introduced herself as Merce, though she pronounced it in that Catalan way that made me feel immediately clumsy, all swallowed consonants and musical confidence. She was seventy if she was a day, dressed head to toe in black despite the thirty-degree heat, and carrying a basket of broad beans that she immediately pressed upon me.

"You look hungry," she said, which was not strictly true but somehow not negotiable either.

I spent the first twenty minutes of our supposed "settling in" standing in her kitchen while she shelled beans and interrogated me about British cooking. Her nephew, she informed me, had once eaten fish and chips in Benidorm and still spoke of it with trauma. When I admitted I couldn't name a single Catalan footballer beyond the obvious ones, she sighed with theatrical despair and called through to her husband, Joan, who was apparently napping somewhere in the house's depths.

Joan emerged blinking and shirtless, a man built entirely from sun damage and stubbornness. He spoke no English and I speak barely any Spanish, let alone Catalan, yet we managed a spirited twenty-minute conversation about roof tiles. I understood perhaps one word in ten. It didn't matter. He patted my shoulder repeatedly, a gesture I interpreted as either welcome or pity, possibly both.

By mid-afternoon, a boy of perhaps twelve had materialised in the lane outside, kicking a football against the wall with rhythmic dedication. Merce shooed him away; he returned; she shooed him again. This dance continued until she finally surrendered and sent me out with two oranges and instructions to "make him useful." His name was Biel, and he spoke excellent English, which he attributed entirely to watching Premier League matches with illegal streaming and no parental supervision. He helped me figure out the water heater, which involved a ritual of switch-flicking that no manual could have explained, and told me his grandmother thought all British people were either royalty or football hooligans, with no middle ground.

"I told her you're probably both," he said, quite seriously.

That evening, as the light went golden over the citrus groves, Merce reappeared with a plate of something fried and unidentifiable, plus two small glasses of mistela. Joan followed with a folding chair and proceeded to demonstrate, without any shared language, the correct way to eat pan con tomate. There was a lot of gesturing. Some of the tomato ended up on my shirt. He found this hilarious.

I sat there, sticky and slightly drunk, watching this improbable family adopt me with the casual efficiency of people who have never met a stranger, only someone they haven't fed yet. The sat nav failure felt like weeks ago. I thought about how I'd planned this holiday around solitude, around finally reading that novel, around being properly alone for once. Instead I was surrounded by characters who wouldn't let me pay for my own oranges, who argued about football formations I didn't understand, who treated my incompetence with the fond patience usually reserved for pets.

It was, I realised, exactly what I hadn't known I needed.