There are hotels that they fulfill their function as a stop on the way and there are hotels that justify a trip. But there are also some, just a few, that are a journey in themselves, places they get that different times and different atmospheres coexist giving shape to something completely different than it can not be found nowhere else. That's what happens in Villa Rosario.
maybe Ribadesella take some responsibility for this. The town, which maintains that atmosphere of spa towns pre-war since the Marchioness of Arguelles insisted on taking to spend the summer there the King Alfonso XII in 1918, It is the perfect setting for one of those unique accommodations.
Views of the Bay of Biscay from the terrace of Villa Rosario, Ribadesella.
Though the story starts a few years earlier, around 1904, when the Marquise ordered the construction a villa on the beach, in an area on the outskirts of town, and she took it upon herself to convince other wealthy families to do the same. That's what happened with Antonio Quesada, an Indiano –an emigrant returned from America– who had made fortune in Cuba with the tobacco business and that he returned to his native area to retire in a villa which he commissioned in 1914 and which he named his wife: Rosario.
The house is a delirium an amalgamation of influences ranging from the empire style to the art nouveau tilework, from regionalist carpentry to details that look directly at the Viennese Sezession. Towers, mansards, glazed spiers and balustrades that intersect almost to excess and wrap a more sober interior of what the facades lead us to suppose.
One of the rooms of Villa Rosario, Ribadesella.
Within everything is contained. Somehow it is as if the building lowered the volume to welcome you and wrap you up, so that after that deployment that is the outside you feel, from the moment you cross the door, at home. Restored cherry woods, dim tones. Everything surrounds the traveler and puts him in the atmosphere.
From here, there is a word that you should not overlook: Unique. It's about the sea view rooms, that breaks just 20 meters from the window. Waking up to that sound, to the Cantabrian light flooding everything, and having coffee, weather permitting, on the terrace, facing the bay, is part of that trip we are talking about. sit inside, soak up classicism while we shelter ourselves in front of a drink if the north insists on showing that its rainy character it is more than a topic, it can be an excellent alternative.
Egg and potato in Ayalga, Villa Rosario (Ribadesella).
AYALGA: ALL THE CANTABRIAN
Not everything is timeless however, in Villa Rosario. Beside him, in the garden, occupying a discreet corner that does not interfere with the terrace, a glass pavilion contains one of the great values of the enclosure. the journey continues here, through the flavors of the environment, hand in hand with the restaurant Ayalga.
An ayalga is a jewel, a treasure found buried on the beach, an object found from a sunken ship, according to the General Dictionary of the Asturian Language. That's the restaurant a find that smells of Cantabrian, by the sea, to something old that now appears reformulated for us. Have that point between mythology, the tradition and the imagined that fits so well in a place like this.
Ayalga is Marcos Granda, the Asturian sommelier which has managed to string together a series of business successes with very few precedents in Spain. Since in 2004 he opened the restaurant Skina, in Marbella, that he received the first star from him in 2008 and the second in 2019, his gastronomic world has expanded through Madrid Clos , who won another star for his part in 2018.
Marcos Granda, creator of Ayalga, Villa Rosario (Ribadesella).
three awards in 10 years they are something exceptional, but then the 2021 edition of the French guide arrived to make these achievements small. to those three stars Suddenly, two more were added: the one from Marbella Nintai and, less than two years after its opening, the one that Granda brought to Villa Rosario.
In this way, the sommelier became one of the reference names in peninsular gastronomy, Ribadesella was confirmed as one of the hot spots of northern cuisine by adding Ayalga to a list that includes names such as La Huertona, Arbidel, Fifteen Knots or the neighbor Gueyu Sea and Villa Rosario added another stage to his journey.
He reserves one of the tables next to the window, facing the sea, looks for the sunset and lets them take you. Asturian pickled mussels, tear peas and salmon wrapped in lactic notes, puffed pitu crest as a base for a mackerel, a bathed sea bass in a saline seaweed broth. You are in Asturias. you are leaning on Cantabrian.
Wines, what a well kept secret they are Asturian wines, and what a good place – what a good team – Ayalga is to explore them. of elegance of the white albarín of Señorío de Ibias to the atypical rosé of Escolinas, born on the slopes of Entrevines. Or a cider, perhaps a brut nature, to start and think about where not to continue, which There is no rush here.
Iodine, grass, meadow, the Sella and the Bay of Biscay, salmon, algae. Flavors that here become icons, that reinvent the Asturian tradition and tell you –once again– that you are in a place that it doesn't look like any other.
You will come back. But before that you will still come back tomorrow in the morning, for breakfast, perhaps at the same table, although the atmosphere is now different. It is easy Take it easy when the sea seems to want to enter through the window, when the northern light bathes everything. The journey continues, but it continues here, without having to go very far. If anything, just curious between the mansions that appear on the beach and that at the time rivaled for grabbing attention on that waterfront. Maybe to the center of town or to go inside for a few hours in the neighboring mountains. But not much else.
Because you want to come back. You will want to sit on your terrace again, without clocks, and look out to the horizon once again. will you want to go back to fill your palate of ocean and mountain, to wake up with the waves breaking behind the window; To return to stare into a golden age of tourism that in this house embraces you and traps you. you want to continue the journey without leaving Villa Rosario.