Vallbona de les Monges

We don’t have much more company at the next stop, just the few nuns who still inhabit the Vallbona de les Monges monastery. They explain to us during the visit that the fact that it is surrounded by the village, unlike the other two with whom it shares the Cistercian Route, is a result of the concessions that the Abbess had to make to overcome the ban imposed by the Council of Trent on female monasteries in isolated locations. After seeing the main spaces, such as the cloister and the souvenir shop where the nuns sell their reproductions of the monastery’s ancient pottery, we follow the route to the Ivars i Vila-sana pond past Belianes, Arbeca and Les Borges Blanques, where they produce the excellent olive oils of D.O.P Les Garrigues.