We’re Paul and Iva, proud owners of Finca Flores Amarillas, an award-winning, 5-star bed and breakfast in the heart of Extremadura, Spain.

To be honest, our home wasn’t supposed to be a B&B at all!

​When we bought the finca back in 2007, all we wanted was to escape the rat race and build our dream country home — a place where our free-range kids would run across fields and climb trees, and Paul could finally skip those long Madrid commutes.

But as our vision and the designs took shape, and our excitement grew, we felt it would be selfish to keep it all to ourselves. Instead, we decided to create a home away from home for other people to escape their busy lives, too, even if only for a few days.

And so the vision changed. We were now eager to start welcoming complete strangers into our home and share with them our slice of Extremadura — a finca with endless views, total privacy, and just enough distance from the village to feel like our own little world.

Of course, things never go as smoothly as one hopes. As we were getting ready to apply for a loan, the 2008 financial crisis swept in, and banks would not hear of it for five long years. La Crisis had begun.

But, the biggest plot twist was still to come: after eventually securing the loan and a fairly generous grant, and being halfway through building, we were suddenly told we couldn’t actually have a B&B here. What?!  The authorities had known about our plans from the beginning, so where did this 'change of heart' come from? "Local bylaws," we were told. Local what?!

Needless to say, we didn't waste any time. Well, at this point, there was hardly any time left to waste anyway. The clock was ticking loud and we were on the brink of losing the grant and ending up with a huge loan, too huge to pay off without our business up and running. We had to get creative. And fast.

After many a sleepless night, countless phone calls to the mayor's office, and a mountain of legal paperwork, we managed to change the bylaws in record time (yup, you heard it right), collect the grant and open just in time to avoid a one-way trip to bankruptcy.

Fast forward to today, and we’ve been welcoming guests for over a decade — always ready for a chat when they’re up for it, and happily invisible when they’re not.

Today, we’ve got a private chef cooking amazing meals with home-grown veggies and local flavours. We work with experienced guides who know the region like the back of their hands. We collaborate with professional coaches who run transformative workshops. Want a nature trek, a cultural tour, or just a quiet spot for your workshops? We’ve got you covered.

We still hit bumps and we still have to deal with Spanish bureaucracy (not our favourite thing to do), but we never shy away from a good challenge. And even with challenges, life on the Finca is a dream come true.

So here we are, ready to welcome your group to our little haven in Extremadura. They’ll come as guests, leave as friends, and with a love for rural life that sticks with them forever.

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​P.S. And yes, those cows you hear from time to time are part of the charm—think of them as our official “moo-sicians.”