I have never been so relieved to see a Tesco bag in my life, and I do not even shop at Tesco. There it was, sagging off my wrist as I stood in the Reus airport car park, filled with the emergency supplies I had panic-bought after realising my suitcase contained seventeen pairs of pants and absolutely no olive oil. The mishap, you see, was that I had packed for a fortnight in Catalonia as if preparing for a camping trip in Cumbria. Tinned soup. Tea bags that require milk. A small jar of Marmite that I now suspected might violate several EU regulations.

The drive to Roda de Bera took about twenty minutes, winding past those absurdly perfect rows of olive trees that look like someone has arranged them for a photograph. I kept glancing at my Tesco bag with something approaching affection. My self-catering villa awaited, and I had approximately four hours until hunger would transform me from a reasonable human into someone who argues with satnavs.

The villa itself was one of those white-washed affairs with terracotta roof tiles that make you feel instantly underdressed. I dumped my luggage, opened the fridge with the reverence of a cathedral visitor, and found it empty but cold. The kitchen, thankfully, was properly equipped. Proper knives. A hob that did not require an engineering degree. I stood there for a moment, genuinely moved, before remembering that possessing equipment and possessing skill are rather different propositions.

My first evening became an exercise in managed expectations. The local supermarket in Roda de Bera, a modest affair near the beach road, yielded tomatoes that actually smelled of tomatoes, which unsettled me after years of British supermarket fare. I bought bread from a bakery where the woman spoke rapid Catalan and I responded with increasingly desperate hand gestures. Dinner was pan con tomate, which I told myself was authentic rather than simply the only thing I could reliably assemble without setting off smoke alarms.

Morning brought the mercat setmanal, the weekly market that transforms a ordinary car park into something glorious. I wandered between stalls with a basket that grew heavier and my Spanish grew worse. The cheese vendor asked me something I did not understand; I nodded enthusiastically and received a wedge of something that smelled like feet and tasted like heaven. I bought calcots, those long green onions that Catalans treat with religious devotion, despite having absolutely no idea how to cook them properly. They sat in my kitchen like an accusation.

By day three I had developed a routine of spectacular inconsistency. Breakfast was perfection: fresh orange juice from the market, bread from yesterday, olive oil that made my emergency Tesco supply seem like a war crime. Lunch was whatever I could assemble without excessive washing up. Dinner became my theatre of ambition and humiliation. One evening I attempted a seafood paella with prawns from the fishmonger near the beach. The result was edible but structurally unsound, more of a seafood rice situation than anything Valencia would recognise. I ate it on the terrace with a glass of supermarket wine and felt genuinely pleased with myself, which perhaps says everything about my standards.

The local restaurants, I should note, were temptingly close. A beachside place did grilled sardines that made my own efforts seem like a cry for help. Another served escalivada, those roasted vegetables dressed with oil, that I attempted to recreate and somehow produced something closer to soup. I took to buying prepared dishes from the market, telling myself this was supporting local business rather than admitting defeat.

By the second week I had achieved a kind of peace. My calcots remained uncooked, eventually donated to a neighbour with pity in her eyes. My pan con tomate technique, however, had become genuinely respectable. I could select tomatoes with authority, rub garlic with confidence, judge the olive oil pour with something approaching wisdom. The kitchen bore scars of my education: a slightly blackened pan, a knife whose edge I had ruined on an overenthusiastic melon, a lingering smell of burned paprika that no amount of ventilation would shift.

On my final morning I sat with my perfected breakfast and watched the sun climb over those absurdly arranged olive trees. The Tesco bag, long empty, had become my beach tote. I had not mastered Catalan cuisine. I had not even particularly attempted it, beyond the occasional enthusiastic disaster. But I had eaten well, mostly through the kindness of local producers and my own growing willingness to keep things simple. The Marmite remained sealed, a monument to my misguided packing. Some holidays teach you who you are. This one taught me that I am someone who should probably check their suitcase before leaving, and that good olive oil covers a multitude of sins.