Volunteering on a Vineyard in the Spanish Pyrenees

When my time in Barcelona was coming to a close and I had a free 10 days on my hands, it seemed natural to me to go and do some volunteering for that short while. After searching through pages on HelpX, I found a vineyard to go to up in the Spanish Pyrenees, in a tiny village called Secastilla, near a town named Graus. In hindsight, I’d have to say my time here was some of my happiest in Spain.

The vineyard is owned and run by a Spanish-American couple named Marie Jose and Jesse, who also have an adorable dog named Chorchi who I pretty much fell in love with on sight. As well as run a number of vineyards in the surrounding area, Casa Luisa has some almond and olive groves nearby, and like to run an eco-friendly household.

The work at Casa Luisa can be very hard at times. You start at around 8am and sometimes work doesn’t finish until 9 or 10pm. You do have breaks in between, though, to have a siesta and eat. Even though the hours were very long, I felt that the work I was doing on the farm made a difference to someone’s life, the way I always want to feel when I’m volunteering. The work seemed worthwhile to me, and a good use of my free time before I left Spain.

The kind of jobs you do depends on the time of year. I didn’t actually do any grape harvesting whilst I was there because it wasn’t the right time, so I mainly did jobs around the house in construction, as the beautiful building still had a lot of work to be done. To see the results of my help in building shelves in the garage to organise the huge range of tools, or knocking down plaster on a wall to put mortar up the next day was seriously rewarding, and the appreciation that comes from the family is more than enough.

One of the perks of using a site like HelpX to volunteer through is that the only fee you pay is the initial 20 euro membership fee. From then on it costs nothing to email hosts and go and stay with them. In Casa Luisa, I was given a comfy bed in a spacious room, and gorgeously satifying meals which I scoffed down after working so hard. I often helped with the cooking, which wasn’t a chore to me because I enjoy it so much, especially with such fresh ingredients that Casa Luisa grow themselves. For me, there was very little else I could ask for, the situation was perfect and let me experience some Spanish rural life after living in a big city for so long.

Speaking of which, I was very lucky to be in Secastilla when their annual festivals were going on, the ultimate rural life experience in the town. This basically includes five days of pure partying, with women at windows being serenaded from the streets, an evening of tortilla-eating, fried egg cook-offs at 5am, and singing and dancing throughout. I had worked seriously hard for 5 days prior to the first night, so Jesse gave me time to fully enjoy the festivals with everyone. Even on the days when there weren’t parties going on, us residents of Casa Luisa would take our chairs out to the street outside and play music until the early hours. Neighbours would come out of the front doors with chairs of their own and sing with us, as we passed around wine. On many occasions I had to pinch myself as the gift of such honest and simple good times was overwhelming.

I learnt a lot during my stay in Secastilla, and not just how to smash the hell out of plaster to get it off a brick wall. The locals welcomed me into their tiny neighbourhood, teaching me some of their local language, Aragonese, as well as being patient with me and my Spanish. The wine I tried was absolutely outstanding, the views of the hills around me were breathtaking, and the calm I found from my time there is something that will stick with me for years to come.