I have never been so grateful for a sat nav in my entire life, and I say that as someone who once got lost in their own local Tesco car park. The drive from Girona Airport to Palafolls was supposed to take forty minutes, which in Catalan springtime apparently translates to "you will miss three turnings, argue with your partner about whether that was definitely a roundabout, and nearly join the motorway back to France." The funny mishap came when we finally spotted our holiday home up a steep lane, cheered triumphantly, and promptly scraped the hire car's exhaust on a drainage dip we had not seen coming. A lovely local man walking his dog did not even flinch. He just gave us the resigned nod of someone who has watched this exact scene play out every April since approximately 1987.

Spring in Catalonia has this particular quality where the mornings fool you completely. We arrived in bright sunshine, threw open every window of our Palafolls place, and felt terribly smug about packing light. By four o'clock the temperature had dropped fifteen degrees, the mountain wind had arrived from Montnegre, and I was wearing every item of clothing I had brought, layered like a depressed onion. The house itself sat perched with views down toward the coast, and that positioning meant we got the full theatrical experience of weather rolling in from the sea while the hills behind us stayed stubbornly sunny. I spent most of that first afternoon just watching clouds argue with each other.

The seasonal timing shaped everything about how the place actually functioned. The pool was technically open, which the letting agency had stressed as a major selling point, but the water temperature suggested they had perhaps filled it that morning from a mountain stream. I waded in exactly once, made a sound I did not know I was capable of making, and retreated to the terrace with a cup of tea that steamed more than I did. The outdoor kitchen and barbecue area looked magnificent in theory, but the spring breezes meant cooking out there required the strategic positioning of three bodies to shield the gas flame. We ate slightly singed sausages while wearing jumpers and declaring it "rustic."

What I had not expected was how the season made the whole town feel. Palafolls in April is not the Costa Brava of July nightmares. The beaches nearby were virtually empty, which meant our morning walks along the shore felt borrowed from somewhere else entirely, somewhere without the baggage of peak-season expectation. The local shops were open but unhurried; the baker still had proper time to explain which pastries were worth bothering with. We ate breakfast on the terrace watching swallows arrive for the season, actual migration happening right above our heads while we complained about the coffee being slightly too strong.

That first evening, the light did something I have only seen in this part of the world. The sun dropped behind the hills and threw this particular golden colour across the house that made every photograph look filtered. We stood on the balcony, still in our ridiculous layered outfits, and I felt that specific holiday feeling of being slightly uncomfortable in your own skin but somehow not minding. The scrape on the hire car exhaust had stopped feeling like a disaster. The cold pool had become a funny story we would tell. Even the sat nav arguments seemed worthwhile.

I think that is what spring does to a place like this. It keeps you slightly off-balance, never quite letting you settle into the lazy rhythm of a summer holiday. You work a bit harder for the good moments, and somehow they stick better. I went to bed that first night listening to frogs that had woken up for the season, loud and unapologetic in the darkness, and I remember thinking that I would probably remember this particular arrival more clearly than any seamless, sun-drenched check-in I had ever had. The mishaps had become the story already, and the season had written them that way on purpose.