casita mandala

What is Casita Mandala?

La Casita Mandala is a small ecological house on the Camino Primitivo de Santiago. We offer breakfast, diner and accomodation « a Donativo » for pilgrims passing by and looking for a special experience.

The idea is to share with them an other way of living, more simple and sostenible.

All the project have been built using Permaculture principles and ethics. As a Permaculture Teacher (From Université Populaire de Permaculture, France) we developped a sostenible Design.

We used Natural materials : Straw, earth, lime, stone, wood, etc… and a lot of recycle materials (old doors, windows, tiles, etc).

Why we are selling the project?

After 5 years the project is receiving its first pilgrims and most of the design is implemented. So why we’re selling it?

Our love of sharing Permaculture and natural building is taking over and we want to open a bigger place to organize Permaculture Design Courses and Natural building workshop. La Casita Mandala is a bit small and limited for that.

So we’re selling the place, with sadness, but we know that someone would be happy to keep along with it.

To Who we’re seeling it?

Because we did everything by ourself, transforming this old ruin into a beautilful project, putting all our hearts into it, we can’t sell it to anybody.

We definitely want to find the right person to keep going with the project. It has to be someone who share our values and way of doing things, excited about a dry composting toilet (a very efficient one) instead of beeing disgusted.

It has to be somone who value natural building and working with nature in the garden.

We know that this person exists and would appear eventually.

More details of the project

Most of this design is implemented, and fortunately you still have things to do and garden!

The land is more or less 1000m2.

The property is composed of :

house :

Top floor, 40 m2: Owner place, small cosy bedroom in the attic, kitchen, living room

Down floor, 30 m2: Bedroom with 4 bed bunks. Receive 8 pilgrims

On the front, there is a small space where we use to offer on donation coffee, tea, bread, marmalade, fruits, etc… For pilgrims who are walking just in front of our house in the morning. It’s a nice cosy space and we have a lot of pilgrims stopping by.

TENDEJON

Small Barn : 40 m2: Pilgrim’s shower, pilgrim’s kitchen, Pilgrim’s dinning room. Bedroom with 2 bunk beds. Receive 4 pilgrims

Everything is natural built. We’re still finnishing it.

Bathroom

Bathroom, 10m2, Dry composting toilet, Tadelakt shower, earth floor, etc

Caravan

We also restored an old caravan, with a small outside space, where you can receive Hospitaleros, volunteers, friends, etc. There is one double bed and one small bed bunk.

The land

The land is 1000m2. It has a lor of small secret corners.

It’s pretty steep but we worked hard on the access, building stone stairs.

You have fruit trees : Lemon, apple, nashi, cherry, kiwi, strawberry, raspberry, etc…

We have a small aromatic corner with sage, lemon balm, rocket, thym, lavender, verbena, etc…

We built beds to grow food

One of the permaculture system we implanted allow us to filter the grey water from the kitchen and reuse it into wicking beds:

The village

San Marcelo is a small beautiful village. 15 persons more or less are living there. People are friendly and know a lot about lots of things, specially gardening.

It’s 7km from Grado, a small town where you can find everything : Pharmacy, supermarket, etc.

It’s 20 min from Oviedo, Asturias capital.

It’s 20 min from the sea.

It’s 25 min from the airport.

The business

The Camino de Santiago is growing. Every year more and more people are walking the way. in 2019 more than 22 000 pilgrims were walking by our door.

You can receive 12 pilgrims per night and propose breakfast a donativo for those who slept in Grado the day before.

For more informations contact us :

casitamandala@gmail.com

If you have more questions we are welcome to answer them :

0034 722 69 38 98

Maxime and Alicia