Coliving and coworking in rural Spain at Hamlet's Friends

Hamlet's Friends is a rural coliving and coworking in Nuño Gómez, a 100-person village in Toledo, 110 km and about 1h15 from Madrid. Five wooden cabins and five rooms in the old mill, from €71.50 and €49.50 a night. The 200 m² coworking runs on dual 600 Mbps fibre and comes with every stay, or €25 for a day pass.

We started this on the assumption that good work does not have to happen in a city. Castilla-La Mancha has the space and the quiet already. What it usually lacks is the internet and the company, and closing that gap is the whole idea behind hamletsfriends.com.

Why coliving and coworking (we call it "co-loving") belong in rural Spain

Six reasons the model works better out here than it did in the city:

• Deep focus, less friction. Nothing here competes for your attention. The loudest thing outside the window is usually a tractor.
• Community by default. With five cabins and five rooms you have met everyone by the second dinner. Remote employees, founders and creatives, sharing a kitchen instead of a Slack channel.
• Quality of life. The trails and the lakes are not a weekend reward here. They are what you do before lunch.
• Access without the stress. About an hour south-west of Madrid by car, about 50 minutes north-west of Toledo. A meeting in the city is a day trip, not a relocation.
• Local impact. We buy from local farmers, hire from the region and put our neighbours' products in front of guests. Every booking leaves money in Nuño Gómez.
• Sustainability. The coworking is a golf clubhouse that had been standing empty for years. We buy local because local is what is here, not because it makes a good line on a website.

Nuño Gómez sits at the foot of the Sierra de San Vicente. For a village of a hundred people it has an implausible amount of infrastructure: a health centre, a pharmacy, a grocery store, a small restaurant, a football pitch, a padel court, a public swimming pool, a cultural centre, a marketplace and a church. Talavera de la Reina, 20 minutes away, covers the rest. Around all of it are lakes and forest and no traffic worth the name, and the weather is mostly sun, which is a gift in May and a reason to start early in August.

Coliving: wooden houses and small rooms

The accommodation, in five lines:

• Five small wooden cabins. Each one private, each one with wifi, air conditioning and a kitchen or kitchenette.
• Five rooms in the old mill. Plain and private, and plenty if you spend the day outdoors or in the clubhouse anyway.
• Pets. Well-behaved dogs and cats up to 20 kg are welcome.
• A shared outdoor area with a barbecue, hammocks, room for yoga and shade to read in or take a call from.
• Cars, bicycles and scooters on site, so turning up without your own is not a problem.

That is the co-loving half. People cook for each other, notice when someone has had a rough call, and open a beer when a launch goes out.

Coworking: a revived golf clubhouse with a view

What is in the clubhouse:

• Big shared tables for heads-down work
• Meeting rooms for team sessions and client calls
• Dual 600 Mbps fibre, indoors and out on the terrace
• Outdoor desks, for the calls that go better under a tree
• A bar and catering for coffee, working lunches and the dinner afterwards
• A view across the sierra that does more for your concentration than it has any right to

Everything a city office gives you, without the commute. A week here tends to go like this:

• Morning: work in the clubhouse, stand-up on the terrace
• Lunch: local produce, cooked properly. In July and August, a swim in the village pool first
• Afternoon: calls from a meeting room, then a long quiet stretch in a corner
• Evening: yoga, a barbecue or a picnic, and a sky with no light pollution in it
• Weekends: hiking, mountain biking, swimming in lakes, bird-watching, archery, open-air cinema, table tennis, table football, board games, art courses, art exhibitions, village bingo, seminars and lectures, karaoke, and parties that still end early enough for Monday's sprint.

Built for one person, and for a whole team

Most of the time it is individuals: digital nomads, remote employees, founders, people trying to finish something. The other regular booking is a company offsite. Planning weeks, innovation sprints, culture work, client workshops. Five cabins and five rooms plus the clubhouse means a team can take the whole property, sleep behind its own doors and still have one room big enough to argue in.

Our promise to the village (and to you)

Four friends from Spain and Germany started Hamlet's Friends, on the theory that a village can be a place to build a career and not only a place to be from. In practice that commits us to this:

• We hire locally, and the builders and electricians who work on the site come from the region.
• We buy from farmers and suppliers nearby, and put what they make in front of everyone who stays.
• We ask guests and our online community before we change anything substantial. It is slower and the decisions are better.

A booking here is a small vote against rural exodus. Nuño Gómez has about a hundred people left, and the arithmetic of a village that size is unforgiving.

Getting here and getting around:

• By air: Adolfo Suárez Madrid-Barajas is the nearest big airport.
• By car: about an hour from Madrid, about 50 minutes from Toledo.
• Nearest town: Talavera de la Reina, for shopping, services and onward transport.
• On site: cars, bicycles and scooters, so you are not stranded without your own.

Teams keep telling us they get more done here than they planned to. Our theory on why:

• Less context switching. No commute, no open-plan neighbour, nothing to nip out for. People stay on one thing for hours.
• Useful collisions. Shared meals, walks and workshops put people beside each other long enough to say the thing they would never have written down.
• Healthy by default. Sun, walking and food grown nearby do what a wellness programme keeps promising to do.
• Belonging. People who cooked together on Tuesday disagree better on Wednesday.

Bookings tend to fall into four shapes:

• Solo work blocks: a cabin for a week or two, to finish the product, the thesis or the book.
• Team offsites: cabins, rooms and meeting space in one booking. We handle catering and the programme.
• Learning: seminars, lectures and skill-shares run by guests and by people from the village.
• Nature first: work in the morning, walk in the afternoon, and the Milky Way from the terrace at night.

Book your stay

Focus, company and fast internet in the same place. Dates and availability are at hamletsfriends.com. If you cannot decide between a week and a month, write and ask us. The month works out cheaper per night.