France – Maureillas-las-Illas

Maureillas-las-Illas is a French town and commune in the Pyrénées-Orientales department and the Occitania region. Its inhabitants are called Maureillanais in French and Morellasesos in Catalan. With 2,700 inhabitants, it preserves some beautiful examples of Vallespir's rural architecture in its main street.

Where to stay

We stayed at the town's municipal campsite (42.486099, 2.80758 lat, long). It has everything you need, easy-to-fill and discharge grey and black water, hot and spacious showers, and an area to wash dishes with hot water. The only thing, as is typical in France, is no paper or seat in the toilet. It is 15 euros daily, although they charge 2 euros for the dog. We stayed for two days and we only paid 15 euros per day. I recommend it as a stop and see the little town, which is very cute.

What to see

Lively and quiet, the town is located in a pleasant environment where cherry trees, vineyards, orchards and cork oaks compete for territory. On its main street, you find some beautiful examples of the rural architecture of Vallespir. The centre is very nice, with many shops, a square with views of the church tower and bars where we decided to have a beer and wine, super expensive after Spain! Maureillas has worked with cork for a long time and has a small cork museum. The town church is the Chapel of San Martín de Fenol. As an anecdote, I saw a woman carrying loaves of bread and asked her where to buy them, and she took me to the bakery, which was closed but opened it for me and gave me a loaf of bread! His mother was from Murcia, so we spoke in Spanish!

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Our next stop in France is Le Barcarès, located in the historical region of Roussillon, on the Côte Catalan. It belongs to the district of Perpignan, which you can see in the next blog!