Arima Hotel & Spa

The lounge at Arima is glass from floor to ceiling, two storeys high, and in autumn the Miramón forest fills it with yellow and copper. Hoz Fontán Arquitectos finished the hotel in 2019 to the Passivhaus standard, in pale vertical cladding. Its heating and hot water come from 28 geothermal wells and the air, and by its own count it uses 70% less energy than a conventional hotel. The rooms keep to white and pale wood, with a glass door onto the trees. Book the Junior Suite Terrace Passiv, for a deck of weathered boards, a lounger behind a glass balustrade and the canopy beyond it. The spa, for over-18s only, is where a building this careful with heat turns generous: a circuit from a 15°C contrast pool up to a 38°C magnesium bath, with a Finnish sauna and a eucalyptus steam room besides.

Recommended for couples who would rather come home from the city to a forest than to a street, and for families, since the Family Passiv is two connected rooms for four. Babysitting, at about €60 an hour with a day's notice, settles who gets the spa. The Eureka! science museum is five minutes on foot; the Old Town is fifteen minutes by car or the 28 bus, and not a comfortable walk. From mid-June to mid-September the rooftop pool and bar open above the treetops, some consolation for a beach that is a ten-minute drive. The hotel takes its heat from the ground; Misura, open on Friday to Sunday evenings only, still takes its from a slow fire in an open kitchen.