Wellness vacation in Andalucia, Spain

Cartajima is a small but thriving community. The town hall, the Ayuntamiento, are doing a great job keeping traditions alive and providing opportunities for youngsters to keep them in the village.

My intention is always to help where I can, employ only local people or companies, encourage villagers to participate in small sustainable tourist enterprises, and do what we can to create entrepreneurial opportunities.

At our Andalucia accommodation we employ only women from our village who traditionally do not have the opportunities available to their male counterparts. We encourage our employees to take as active a role in the running of the accommodation as they can, and hope to offer them training in all aspects of hotel management. Our purchases are all made within a 20 km radius of the village except for a few specialist items but less and less of the things we need are sourced outside our local area preferring Andalucian products and services. We strive to keep our environmental impact as low as it can be whilst retaining the level of luxury that our guests demand. Some of our projects have been culturally unacceptable such as composting. I tried to rent a little bit of land outside the village where we could make compost but the people are frightened of the idea, believing that it will attract unwanted vermin and others (wild boar perhaps!) apart from that failure I believe we have put in place over the years many energy and resource saving systems - no disposables, low energy lighting, solar panels, drought resistant plants where possible to mention just a few of our efforts.