About
your hosts, the house, the location, the environment ...and talking heads
This Must Be The Place is a wedding venue located near the pretty town of Moià and one hour from Barcelona. Launched in Spring 2018, we have set out to be a little bit different.
Our name and philosophy have been inspired by the Talking Heads song ‘This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody)’, which songwriter David Byrne describes as:
“A real honest kind of love song… I tried to write one that wasn’t corny, that didn’t sound stupid or lame the way many do. I think I succeeded”.
He did, and we intend to too.
Your Hosts
Jo, Duncan, Indy (age 9) and Valentina (age 11, or 60 in cat years) are your hosts. They upped sticks and relocated from Herne Hill, south London, in June 2016 with a crazy dream. Two years (and a lot of hard work) later, that crazy dream became reality. They can’t wait to welcome you to their home.
Jo’s background is in film production and her film credits include the Woody Allen film ‘Vicky Cristina Barcelona’. She previously lived in Barcelona for 10 years between 1998 and 2008, speaks fluent Spanish and is also pretty nifty at the local Catalan language.
Duncan’s background is in the festival and music industry as one of the producers and creatives behind the UK’s multi-award winning Bestival and Camp Bestival music festivals, as well as its sister record label Sunday Best. He also DJs as one half of the Sombrero Sound System (albeit very occasionally nowadays), and speaks a slightly confusing mix of Spanish and Catalan, badly, with a few hand gestures thrown in for good measure.
The House
‘Mas Casamitjana’ has been here since the 14th Century, although it grew to roughly the size it is now in the mid 18th Century – largely due to the skills of Joseph Casamitjana, whose name you can see proudly inscribed about several door lintels in the house and also above the door of what we are now calling La Caseta (hope that’s cool Joseph). ‘Mas’ is an abbreviation of ‘Masia’ which is the Catalan name for a farmhouse (or ‘Finca’ in Spanish).
We live in the main house all year round, on the 1st and 2nd floors, and our guest accommodation is on the ground and lower ground floors. So we're always here to help with anything you might need!
The Location
Our house is about an hour from Barcelona and its airport, and also from Girona and its ‘Costa Brava’ airport. Barcelona has a reputation as one of the trendiest cities in Europe, and the province of Catalunya is well known for its wonderful climate, beautiful natural light, fantastic food and wine.
Our nearest town is Moià, a charming historical market town with a fine tradition of producing outstanding food – much of which is organic. Moià is most alive on a Sunday morning for its market day and people from all over the province come to sample its high quality produce – and for a town of approx 6,000 inhabitants to sustain eight butcher/delis, three bakeries and a host of great restaurants, it must be doing something very right. Yum.
Oh, and it also has an excellent record shop!
The Environment & Sustainability
We strive to be environmentally conscious and sustainable, both personally and within our business. We love to reuse and repurpose old materials (you'll hopefully spot a lot of this when you look around) and we try to reduce our waste as much as possible. All our kitchens (including the guest one that you will use) include recycling stations.
From 2023 we will be exclusively working with one catering company, Caravan Made, partly because they share these values and have a local and seasonal approach to their gastronomy (they are also very nice people and their food is delicious!).
The hand-soap, moisturiser and shower gel that is complimentary in all the bathrooms is made by Yope using natural or low processed ingredients. Our fields around the house are farmed with respect to the environment by local organic farmers Biobastona.
We ask you to do your bit too... we only allow biodegradable confetti and we ask that you do not use wedding decorations, favours and other elements that are single-use, non-recyclable or non-biodegradable. We also strongly recommend that you ask your florist to use reusable or bio-degradable floral bases, and that you encourage your friends and family to take flowers away with them at the end of the night so they have a second lease of life. Thank you.