No and let me explain why… But first, I want to tell you the story of how I ended up in Wonder House Coliving.

I met Anya and Fidel back in 2023 during one of my stays at Nine Coliving. It was a delightful surprise when they sent me a message inviting me to the new coliving they opened along with Aleix, the other co-owner. The coliving is located one hour away from Barcelona, in the middle of Montseny natural park in Spain. Its name? Wonder House Coliving. The thing is that I’ve already seen glimpses of what the coliving was really about through social media, and I was intrigued to say the least. The content felt real, fun, and weird in a great way. So naturally, I was wondering (pun intended) if what I was seeing was real. It was.

It’s also validating that with the efforts Ramón, Sole and I put on Colivers Club (the podcast I host about colivings) and being an ambassador for Mapmelon to see people approach us to visit their coliving and make collaborations. And hey, if that’s something you’d be interested in, please, DM me in my Insta (@cesalberca)! 

So we checked our agendas and sadly I could only be there for a week with my partner Adriana… But let me tell you, what a week.

Day 1: W@ndering around the Coliving

The first day was about settling down and resting. Anya and Fidel gave us a tour of the house and the property and introduced us to the colivers, which I think is always a nice touch. 

As we were touring the house, each step made us feel more in awe of the enormity of the space in the coliving. It is huge (Almost 3.000 squared meters!).

Let me list it for you:

• 2 kitchens (one we don’t use)
• Coworking with around 8 tables and monitors, just above the main room. It’s such an elegant area and quite an interesting open layout, you feel the productivity once you set foot in the coworking
• Main room where we sometimes have food, host activities and host the weekly meeting
• Tea room/boardgame room
• Cinema room with proyector
• Natural pool area with balinese bed
• Gym/garage
• Tool workshop
• Front garden
• Back garden
• Ping pong table
• Outside dinning area
• 2 BBQs
• 10 rooms
• Balcony area
• Attic/Costume wardrobe
• Meditation room
• Forbidden room

And I probably missed a few rooms and spaces. There’s some spaces on the ground floor like the fully equipped second kitchen with oven and with a terrace with two tables for 20 people that, get this, we didn’t even use! There’s so many possibilities and spaces that can be repurposed for the coliving it’s ridiculous. I know that Anya, Fidel and Aleix have so many ideas for the coliving that I for one, can’t wait to visit again.

Once we unpacked Aleix offered to drive us to buy some groceries. It was a short 10 minutes ride to the local supermarket. I really love a remote coliving without sacrificing mobility, and having 3 owners with 2 separate cars allows you to easily move around if you need to. But to be honest, the coliving is so big and has so many spaces that we didn’t feel constrained in the coliving. But yeah, buying groceries was something we needed to do, not only for ourselves but also to cook one night for the rest of the colivers.

Food is always a big part of colivings, and I’ve tried before a coliving with shared dinners every weekday (Alpiness) and I found it extremely joyful to sit all together every night and having a shared meal. That also means that one day you are going to cook with another coliver, which although in the beginning I thought could be stressful it was actually quite fun and a great bonding experience. So we bought extra food so we could prepare a tasty meal one of the days.

Aleix told us the system for the shared meals. You would need to contribute 5 € for each meal and there’s a fridge and shelf with a lot of ingredients that you are invited to use so there’s no food waste. I think it’s a nice system and it worked pretty well!

After a light dinner, we joined to watch half of a movie being projected in the cinema room. It was an Indian Telugu-language epic period action drama called RRR. It was strikingly different from anything I’ve watched before and such a fun experience to share with everyone.

And just like that, after a fantastic movie night, the first day was over!

Day 2: Weekly meeting ritual

Day two was about talking to people and getting a feeling of the place. It was a nice feeling. The pool area was very much used during our second day. There is something about the place and the fun and chaotic energy of the owners that I felt compelled to start writing a script… But we’ll come back to that later, it’s not time yet.

Mondays at Wonder House Coliving are quite special, since everyone comes together after dinner and we have a “Weekly Ritual”. Yes, they call it ritual. No, we didn’t sacrifice anything/anyone (for now). It’s all aligned with the idea that Wonder House is a place of exploration and play, so they wanted to go as far as possible from the word “meeting”. I agree.

During the ritual we talked about how we had felt in the previous week and set intentions for the upcoming one. Oh! And during each week, people write down themes on little notes for the week and put them in a jar. The jar has a moustache. I thought I should include that because it might be relevant. Or not. They do so because Wonder House Coliving has a weekly theme. I LOVED IT. It puts an intention behind the week and people craft activities around the theme. During our week the theme was… Spa week! It was very celebrated as you can see in this reel!

People quickly offered cool activities and ideas for the week, but you’ll need to keep reading to know what ended up happening!

Day 3: Gnocchi Night

Day three I spent finishing the script of what would be a short movie I was going to direct during my stay, shot with colivers as actors and actresses. The movie follows Adriana, as she visits for the first time Wonder House Coliving she starts experiencing sudden and abrupt “time cuts”. She sometimes is in a room and when someone mentions another activity or room she just appears there. In the beginning she is confused and disoriented, since she thinks it has to do with a headache she has, but as time goes on she starts realizing that something strange with time is happening at Wonder House… And you’ll need to watch the short once we screen it to discover the rest! Ay, that’s such a cliffhanger, that’s not nice. Reshare this post on Instagram, mention Wonder House and Mapmelon and I’ll send you the script!

Writing a script and directing a short movie with colivers is such a cool project that Anya, Fidel and Aleix had the trust and energy to participate in as part of our collaboration. I also think it’s great for the coliving since it will show a lot of the rooms and the vibe of playfulness and mystery that surrounds the coliving.

During the afternoon Adriana and I did a short hike to visit a river that is nearby. It was such a beautiful area surrounded by nature that we lost track of time and we almost missed… The Gnocchi Night! We came back to the coliving to a kitchen filled with laughter, energy and pasta! Anouk and Nico were preparing handmade pasta since it’s tradition that every 29th of each month in Argentina you cook Gnocchi and you place money under the plate to signify abundance and prosperity for the next month. Anouk even made Tiramisu. It was such a lovely night to have dinner all together outside in a candlelit setting. A day to remember. The good thing is that I created another reel so I have a nice little memory.

Day 4: Massage Workshop

Day 4 (Sometimes we call it Wednesday) came by surprise, since it also marked that half of our stay was already behind us, and in front of us lay only the despair of knowing we only had four more days to spend at Wonder House. To ease our pain, Tilo and Adriana prepared an in-depth massage workshop. It had everything: incense, essential oils, relaxing music, and a lot of knowledge that was gracefully shared with the other colivers attending the workshop. 

We learnt about different techniques like effleurage, kneading and palming. They also came up with names for new techniques, which was quite creative by them. The session ended with a hot tea while we shared in a circle how our experience had been and our impressions. There´s also a reel about this experience too!

Day 5: Movie shooting

Shooting began that day. Yeah, don’t worry, I mean shooting the short movie! I was amazed by the effort people put in their characters for such a short notice. We were all learning together as we progressed and having fun in the process. It was my first time directing, which was quite challenging! Sometime I’d forget people can’t read my mind to act in the way I envision the movie in my head. How dare they! So now I understand way more about the role of the director and why there’s a cinematographer that focuses on the technicalities along with the photography team and moreover, how the production team solves problems ahead of time. We didn’t have that and it didn’t matter to us. We are still going to accept the Oscar for the movie if need be.

During the afternoon we decided that since it was spa week we should go, to you know, a spa. So we headed to Magma Spa. If I ever think about becoming a villain who regularly visits a spa I would definitely choose Magma Spa. The place had a very sharp aesthetic which seemed taken out of a Bond movie.

The spa had amazing design and facilities and it’s cool that it’s not so far from the coliving. That night was an early night because the very next day… Oh the very next day!

Day 6: Spa Party

Ok, Fridays at Wonder House Coliving are quite big. I mean big. I mean huge. It’s the day where we all organize the theme party! During the morning we finished shooting the movie and in the afternoon wait wait wait. We finished shooting the movie! So cool to see part of the project complete! I hope I can make it justice during editing and find a way to tie everything together. I’m quite excited about it! If you want to see the short movie make sure to follow me! Ok, having finished a somewhat spammy message we can go back to the Theme Party Organisational Unit, which was promptly formed by Aleix, Adriana and myself. Our task: turning the natural pool area into a spa. We prepared a water stream with a hose, hot towels, face cold plunge, cucumber and face masks, candles, incense, and Aleix gave an amazing tour of our facilities in a way that made it seem he was the owner of Wonder House Spa. Such a cool experience. Here’s some pictures.

For dinner we prepared a cereal-free pizza and some Russian salad. They were quite the treat! Thanks to Adriana who is an integrative health expert she made sure that we had a very healthy dinner.

She also, in theme with the week, prepared thoughtful meditations and a Yoga practice that was very moving (figuratively and literally). Please share some love with her, she quit her job recently to follow her dreams!

Day 7: Acroyoga and local festivities

Saturday I took time for myself, sometimes at colivings we get carried away with activities and people that we forget that we also need time for ourselves. So I watched F1, read in the hammock, went to the pool and joined eventually an impromptu Acroyoga class. The lighting was superb so I took my camera to capture these beautiful stills.

During the night, after having rested, we all went to the nearest town to celebrate a local festivity. There was music and dance. We also had a fun moment where Aleix had a splinter in his finger and was trying to take it out to no avail. And then…. Adriana took some tweezers from her bag. She truly has dedication to health. So in a few moments the splinter was out of Aleix’s finger and we were all celebrating! I think the local festivity from that moment was all about Aleix’s splinter. For sure.

Day 8: Via Ferrata

In truthness (I don’t know if this is a word but if you need proof this is not AI written this is it) we were not supposed to stay Sunday. We were supposed to be driving back to Madrid, where our home base is. But the plan for Sunday was something that we didn’t want to miss. We went to a Via Ferrata. There were some people, I won’t say names (Anouk, Anya, Roberto and Tom) that went on to do kayaking. However, the cool group (Fidel, Aleix, Adriana, Tilo, Serkan and I) went on to do an amazing Via Ferrata that went by the coast. It was a K2 and some parts reached K4. And then something unexpected happened. While we were on top of the rocks climbing… We saw the kayaking group! They came close and we were cheering and saying hi, I managed to capture it in this video! How cool is that?

After having finished the Via Ferrata some of us went to the beach to have a well-deserved swim and then afterward we headed back to the coliving. Once at Wonder House Coliving people brought their dinners to the garden to share a last meal before, sadly, Adriana and I started saying our goodbyes, we had to wake up super early to drive back to Madrid.

Conclusion

The conclusion is that I didn’t want this story to have a conclusion. I want to keep it open so I get to come back to Wonder House Coliving. And I think my conclusion is that. Was Wonder House a One Hit Wonder? No, I think I hit One Wonder of a Coliving.