That’s what the American writer Thomas Wolfe said, and I’m learning that it applies to artists’ residencies as well. My first visit to Can Serrat was less than three years ago – I was charmed to be in the 300-year-old Catalan farmhouse near El Bruc, a town less than an hour’s drive from Barcelona but well off the tourist track. Sitting in the shadow of the non-monastery side of Montserrat, it was owned by a consortium of Norwegian artists, and filled with oddly-placed funky sculptures and neo-Venetian wall decorations. The communal toilets might be unpredictable, but the conversation among the international group of resident artists around the farmhouse kitchen table, where we all huddled in front of the fire to escape the damp October cold, was always intense and stimulating. I learned about cutting-edge art-photo techniques from a man from Japan; I discussed the Berlin art scene with a painter who lived there; I debated the merits of installations and documentation with a Hungarian post-modernist. The writers were from Ireland, Sweden, Norway (by way of Iran); I was the only North American, and only one of two native English-speakers.

These days El Bruc, like much of Spain a victim of the recent real estate boom-and-bust, is filled with empty condo developments, and its main street boasts a real estate office advertising still-overpriced properties. Barcelona has become unaffordable, and younger people move to El Bruc to commute to their jobs in the city. The locals in El Bruc who run the lone supermarket and small grocery stores still speak only Catalan, but it’s not the same. The regional Hispano-Igualadina bus that links El Bruc to Barcelona runs much more frequently than it used to, and feels more like a suburban commuter run, especially when it’s filled to capacity at rush hour – matrons get on at Maria Christina on the fashionable Avinguda Diagonal laden with chic bags from trendy boutiques, and the passing scenery with its industrial plants and big-box stores feels like southern California of a decade or two ago.

Collectives, like all human forms, are unstable; it’s probably amazing that things went as well as they did for over twenty years. No one’s talking; but between the discreet hints it’s possible to figure out that there was a difference of opinion about the way the whole operation should run. Nowadays the old wing, where I had stayed in a whitewashed room bearing a line drawing of Don Quixote on one of the bare walls, is off limits to residency artists; only the owners and their student groups stay there. The absent-minded and distracted artist-managers are history; things are run on a more business-like plan by Marcel and Karine, a husband-and-wife team of business grads, escapees from the corporate world.

The days of arguing post-modern aesthetics around the kitchen table are history; now the kitchen is Marcel’s domain, where he joins the legion of Catalan chefs in concocting his own creations based on the traditional cuina – new takes on the hearty sausage and pulses of a country kitchen. “Come with me to meet my other love,” he entices me one Saturday morning, and drives to a rustic hostellerie that houses Isabelle, his beloved donkey, also the symbol of Catalonia – if once-haughty imperial Spain is represented by the bull of the corrida, then the practical down-to-earth Catalans would choose the affectionate donkey as their symbol.

These days, most resident artists at Can Serrat are English-speaking, from the UK or North America. We spend our days in silent work, finding a spot in one of the scattered studios. We gather for dinner together, wondering what Marcel will introduce us to that evening – the traditional Catalan snack of chocolate dipped in olive oil and rubbed with salt, or the curd-like white cheese eaten with walnuts and honey? He leaps on the outdoor table to explain the dish, while the mosquitoes have their own feast of our legs under the table.

Like much of Barcelona and its region, Can Serrat has become tamer, more business-like, a little less quirky. The anarchic artistic heart remains; it’s just a little harder to find.