Hotel Aire de Bardenas

History

If you like big dramatic landscapes in remote corners of the world, you’ll love it here. This design hotel stands on the edge of the Bardenas Reales National Park. On one side the desert rolls west towards wind-sculpted hills. On the other, wheat fields stretch back towards the medieval town of Tudela. The hotel Aire de Bardenas was built to blend into this deeply rural landscape and when you drop down a track in the middle of nowhere, you’ll think you’ve washed up at a fruit farm. Wind turbines whirl on a distant ridge while the compound itself is encircled by walls of wooden crates. It’s all nicely filmic, though for a moment you’ll wonder if you’re in the right place.

Weddings and Events

Soon your confusion is swept away and you’re standing in the cool embrace of this lovely hotel, looking out through big windows onto a sun-drenched courtyard. On the far side you spot what appear to be prefabricated cubes, painted pale olive. Now that you’re tuning into the playful industrial design of the hotel, you guess correctly that these are a batch of rather funky rooms. Some gaze into the desert, others open onto private courtyards with vast round bathtubs. Inside, décor is minimalist, almost spartan, but you’ll be deeply comfortable. Elsewhere, there’s an extremely productive kitchen garden, a sparkling pool that looks onto the mountains, and a swanky restaurant for delicious Navarre food.

Features

Minimum guests: 80
Maximum guests: 200
Menu from 38.5€
Pets Welcome: Yes, 20€/pet
Parking: Yes
Accommodation: Yes

Accommodation

There are 10 rooms in the main house and 12 cubes in the courtyard. All have gorgeous daybeds built into bay windows. This is the signature feature of the hotel and it works a treat – comfy little sofas that are easy on the eye. They are especially good in the cubes with desert views as you can loll about all day, losing your gaze in the horizon and watching the light at play.

The style throughout is the same. Minimalist interiors come with pared-down contemporary design. You get white walls, stripped floorboards and raw pine window frames. None are huge so if you want extra space book one of the suites, which have sofas in separate sitting areas. All rooms have bathrobes and toiletries in white-tiled bathrooms that come with excellent power showers. There’s good storage, too, and air conditioning, and flat-screen TVs hang on the walls (though annoyingly they only have Spanish channels).

Rooms in the main house don’t have desert views, but they all come with private terraces, 5 of which hold open-air bathtubs. These terraces are very private – no windows overlook them. Two rooms in the main house are suites, and their sitting areas open onto private garden terraces, where a bathtub waits. We’ve heard feedback that these main-house rooms can be noisy so if this bothers you, book a cube.

Of the 12 cubes, 9 have desert views; they are exceptionally popular. Three don’t have the view, but instead come with private terraces and big open-air bathtubs. One suite has windows everywhere: in the bedroom, in the sitting room and in front of a big square bath for 2 people. The other suite has an open-air bath overlooking the desert, but book early if you want it – it’s the most popular room of all. Cubes with desert views don’t have terraces. Some have chairs outside in the courtyard, but these are not particularly private.

How to arrive

Aire de Bardenas is set in the Bardenas Reales National Park, 3km from Tudela in the Navarre region of northern Spain. It is 1 hour from Zaragoza airport, and 250km from Bilbao.

Latitud: N 42º 4′ 43.519”
Lenght: O 1º 33′ 55.522”
Alt: 287m