🇪🇸 FINCA LA DONAIRA
New luxury in Andalusia
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🇪🇸 PLACE: FINCA LA DONAIRA
Under the Andalusia Sun.
By Christina Chao
If you can spot the Andalusian farmhouse perched high in the Serranía de Ronda, you’ll find a quiet eco-friendly sanctuary in the South of Spain. Finca La Donaira offers a new order of luxury experience where nature reigns supreme. As an eco-retreat, organic farm and equestrian centre with Lusitano horse breeding, this retreat also moonlights as an ecological and gastronomic project that fuses tradition with innovation to create a modern utopia.
Finca La Donaira is a home away from home, and does not have the modern day luxuries that most other hotels have. They have “functional beauty, nine utterly dreamy guest rooms, a close connection with nature, a freeform approach to hospitality, an outstanding equestrian program, all sorts of farm animals, a natural swimming pool fed by a mountain spring, a pervasive tranquility, permaculture that does not reek of hippie-dom, the soft amber glow of the Andalusian sun, and the confidence of a place that knows the rules well enough to break them.” In short terms — they don’t have the stereotypical concierge luxuries like television, reception, bar, tasting menus, or anything that screams bougie. This is quiet luxury in the most minimalist and traditionalist sense.
With a medicinal garden with over 300 plant species, this is an herablist’s dream. Austrian tech entrepreneur Manfred Bodner bought the now 1,500-acre estate in 2005 and envisioned an ecological campus. He had come to Spain on business a couple of years earlier and found his childhood passion for horses reawakened by the lively equestrian culture. He also saw in the estate, on the rolling hills of the Serranía de Ronda, an ecological canvas on which to reflect his family’s (and country’s) tradition of holistic living. He felt that Western societies’ relationship with the biosphere was generally broken, and he had some ideas about fixing that — thus, created La Donaira which feeds into eco-luxury tourism.
The main house is a timeless fusion of styles and traditions, a confabulation that’s somehow both fully Spanish and completely unlike anything else. La Donaira acts as somewhat of a utopia that reflects the spirit of Andalusian village design, architecture, and functionality of eco-luxury. There is also the “most radically possible bio construction principles,” such as choosing stone from the UNESCO World Heritage limestone quarries in Moron de la Frontera rather than concrete, using the rocks of the farm’s grounds to remake the house’s walls, and fabricating bricks out of air-dried earth making it authentically unique, traditional, and quirky.
Proper meals are served on the terrace, around the community area and in the kitchen, which was custom-made from 19th-century factory equipment: legs of cast iron machine parts, a surface of leather drive belts that have thousands of kilometers of use on them, making them equally soft and firm to the touch. The cooking is homestyle and sharable, with an emphasis on the local: vegetables and salad greens from the gardens, eggs and milk from the chickens and goats, and proteins from the lambs, cows and chickens.
It's the kind of food that could change a vegetarian’s mind. There is an emphasis on the importance of livestock which plays in regenerative agriculture. La Donaira has a thoughtful complexity that belies its freeform hospitality. CHECK IN HERE.
🇪🇸 PERSON: RONALD JACOBS
GM of La Donaira
“Our guest is a high-end traveler looking for generosity,” says Jacobs, who managed brand-name hotels in Milan and California. “Generosity of time, of space, of attention. Big hotels have a hard time matching that. It’s just math.” La Donaira’s is “a more fulfilling kind of hospitality. It reminds us that we are still part of today. It’s not completely in the past” but there’s an “emotional feeling” and a sense that it’s a “retreat from the ways we’ve lost our way in modern life. We see how life can be very different.”
🇪🇸 PRODUCT: CAIA
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🧘 WELLNESS WEDNESDAY
Your wellness fix in all dimensions.
💪 PHYSICAL: Othership has landed. Visit the 90-person performance sauna in New York City's Flatiron District — one of the largest saunas in North America.
💗 EMOTIONAL: Marianne Williamson shares her insights into how the practical application of love every day can provide an answer to the problems that confront us, whether these are in our relationships, our careers or our health
📚 MENTAL: This is a book about self-sabotage. Why we do it, when we do it, and how to stop doing it—for good.Coexisting but conflicting needs create self-sabotaging behaviors.
🙏 SPIRITUAL: Book a 60 minute Reiki session at Sage and Sound to cleanse your energy, regain focus, reduce stress, + improve your sleep. It’s an ideal mental reset for those dealing with anxiety, stress, or sleep issues, aiming to refresh + realign while releasing negative emotions. BOOK NOW.
😎 SOCIAL: Workout in the Hamptons with your favorite brands before the end of summer. Email auraswellcollective@gmail.com to be added to the list.
🌎 ENVIRONMENTAL: Saving Gracie needs your help saving the lives of 50+ rescue animals. By donating, you provide them with healthy hay and grain, clean and fresh water, 'Gold Standard' medical care, and upkeep and maintenance of pastures and facilities on Gracie's Farm. DONATE HERE.
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