By the time we finally found the turning for Villa Sa Capella, I had already reversed into a dry stone wall trying to let a moped pass, and my partner was doing that silent breathing thing that means I am definitely buying dinner later. The sat-nav had given up three miles back, defeated by Sant Antoni's winding lanes, and we were now following a man on a bicycle who had waved us down outside a petrol station and insisted, in no Spanish I recognised, that he would lead the way.

His name was Toni, though he pronounced it with a sharp click at the end that I spent the rest of the week failing to replicate. He cycled ahead of our crawling hire car, occasionally looking back to flash a grin missing its left canine, wearing flip-flops and what I can only describe as formal swimming trunks. When we reached the villa's unmarked gate, he simply leaned his bike against an olive tree and announced he would stay for a coffee.

The villa itself materialised through a tunnel of bougainvillea, all whitewash and terracotta and that particular hush that makes you whisper without meaning to. Toni strode straight past the pool, which glimmered like a promise, and into the kitchen as if he owned the place. "My cousin built this," he said, tapping a wall. "Badly. You will have problems with the hot water. I will show you the trick." The trick involved a sequence of tap-turning that felt like defusing a bomb, accompanied by his commentary about which guests had failed and suffered cold showers.

We never did find out if he actually had any claim to the place. The property manager arrived an hour later, a brisk German woman called Inge who simply nodded at Toni and asked if he had eaten her yoghurt again. "Only the mango ones," he replied, utterly unashamed.

Inge showed us the villa's practicalities with the efficiency of someone who had done this two hundred times, but kept getting interrupted by Toni's asides. The outdoor kitchen? "I cooked a paella there for twenty people, very drunk, very good." The covered terrace? "Sleep there in August, the bedroom is too hot, you will thank me." The distant glimpse of Sant Antoni bay? "Full of English boys with no shirts, avoid, avoid." Inge's eye twitched slightly at this, but she said nothing.

By late afternoon we had accumulated what felt like a small committee. A woman called Marga appeared from the neighbouring finca bearing figs and a dog with three legs, introduced only as "the Captain." She spoke rapid Catalan that Toni translated loosely and apparently inaccurately, judging by her increasingly theatrical gestures. At one point she seized my hand, examined my palm, and delivered a lengthy prognosis that Toni summarised as "you will eat fish, you will be happy, do not trust the ferries."

I found myself strangely content in this chaos, sitting on a terrace chair that wobbled on uneven stone, watching strangers argue about whether the figs were early or I was simply confused about the month. My usual holiday self would have been fretting about unpacking, about the Wi-Fi password, about whether I had chosen the right villa at all. Instead I was drinking something Toni had made from hierbas and supermarket lemonade, listening to Inge explain the recycling system while the Captain attempted to mount the barbecue.

What struck me, as the light turned golden and Sant Antoni began its evening hum in the distance, was how thoroughly these people had dismantled any idea of a private, curated holiday. There would be no sleek solitude here, no pretending we were the only people for miles. The villa was embedded in something older and more stubborn, a network of cousins and borrowed yoghurt and unsolicited palm readings.

Toni left as the sun touched the hills, cycling away with a wave that suggested he might return tomorrow or might not, either option equally acceptable. Marga followed with the Captain hobbling behind, and Inge finally completed her interrupted tour with the air of someone surviving a minor natural disaster. We were left with figs we did not know how to ripen, a hot water system we had already forgotten, and the particular quiet that follows human noise.

My partner and I stood at the pool's edge, watching the first stars appear over the bay. "I thought we'd be alone," they said. I thought about Toni's missing tooth, and Marga's firm grip, and Inge's patient exhaustion. "So did I," I said. "I'm glad we're not."