Gran Hotel Balneari Blancafort

Gran Hotel Balneari Blancafort in La Garriga, Catalonia, Spain, is one of the most distinguished thermal grand hotels of the Catalan spa tradition, where the bicarbonate and naturally carbonated mineral waters of the La Garriga thermal area—one of the most historically significant spa towns in Catalonia, positioned in the Congost Valley at the foot of the Montseny Natural Park—have been used therapeutically since ancient times and commercially since the eighteenth century when the European grand hotel thermal resort model was at the height of its cultural prestige. La Garriga's thermal springs, emerging from the geological boundary between the Pyrenean foothills and the Barcelona coastal range, produce bicarbonate and carbonated waters of characteristic Catalan mineral quality that have attracted Barcelona's cultural and bourgeois elite for generations of therapeutic and leisure visits. The grand hotel format preserves the architectural and social aspirations of the nineteenth-century thermal resort tradition in a setting that combines Catalan landscape beauty with the historic mineral spring heritage of one of Spain's most culturally refined spa destinations.