I’ve spent rather more than half a lifetime looking for the perfect ski resort. Last winter, to my intense surprise, I found it – in, of all places – the Spanish Pyrenees. Baqueira Beret, still almost unknown to British skiers, is fit for a king. Indeed, King Juan Carlos has a sumptuous holiday home here. He no longer skis himself, but members of the Spanish royal family make use of it on high-season dates and most weekends.

The journey to reach this revelation about Baqueira has taken me to more than 500 resorts in 20 countries. Inevitably, I’m frequently asked which is the best. My stock answer is that on any particular day it can be anywhere you happen to find yourself. But “best” begs the questions “best for what?”, along with “best for whom?” Best depends not only on your standard of skiing, but also on what you are personally looking for in a holiday.

Baqueira – I’ve been there several times since it opened in 1964 – now has just about everything any of us could ever want from a ski resort. The Spanish complain that prices in their answer to the swanky resorts of Megève in France and Gstaad in Switzerland are far higher than in any other of their resorts, such as Formigal, La Molina or Sierra Nevada. But they’re still less than half what you will find in one of France’s top destinations such as Val d’Isère , or its Swiss equivalent, Verbier . How about a main course in a smart tablecloth restaurant for £9 and a bottle of delicious local red wine for less than a fiver?

The resort is in the Pyrenees, but make no comparison with kiss-me-quick Andorra. Sophisticated Baqueira lies on the high Bonaigua Pass in the Val d’Aran, a remote cleft in the north of the mountain range. It acts as a mountainous back door into Spain from France – the nearest airport, two hours away, is Toulouse. In the Second World War the French Resistance smuggled 20,000 Jews along vertiginous goat tracks to safety here. It’s a proud component of would-be-autonomous Catalonia. Here in this Pyrenean Eldorado they firstly speak Aranese followed by Catalan, Spanish, and a smidgen of French, if you insist.

The first requirement of the perfect ski resort is, of course, the snow and the actual skiing. In recent winters Baqueira has enjoyed some of the best cover in Europe. In 2012-13 it recorded a mighty base of 400cm when the lifts closed at the end of the season. Last season was almost as fabulous.

The original resort is at 1,500m, with lower and higher satellites, and the top lift rises to a respectable 2,516m. The piste map records a modest but respectable 146km of groomed runs, 26km of them new for this winter and served by an extra chairlift.

The beauty of the terrain here lies not only in the long runs of all standards, but in the mainly simple, but nevertheless exciting, off-piste variations from almost every marked run. True, most of the skiing is intermediate, but some steep couloirs such as Escornacrabes (Where Goats Tumble) provide plenty of challenges for experts. From the top, Goats induces a frisson of pure fear. However, when you pluck up the courage to point your skis over the lip, the experience is pleasantly more benign.

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A huge plus point here is the relatively low-cost heli-skiing with Pyrenees Heliski (0 34 655 012 393; pyreneesheliski.com), based eight miles away in the ancient valley town of Vielha. A day with five drops costs €790 (£625), but prices start at just €290 (£230) for two drops when booked through the local British BB ski school (01903 233323; bbskischool.co.uk). Incidentally, having a first-class British ski school in my perfect resort is an important extra bonus.

The terrain is in three areas linked across six main peaks, with main access from Baqueira itself by a gondola from the village centre. The hamlet of Beret is little more than a lift station and a terrain park at 1,800m that can be reached on skis or by car from Baqueira. It’s the starting point for some easy blue runs as well as a few much more demanding ones on the Tuc deth Dossau, the highest point of the ski area.

Now, the resort itself. No, it’s not the prettiest. Like Tignes, the main base at 1,500m dates from the Sixties ski boom when architectural beauty played second fiddle to bed numbers. The latest development of four and five-star hotels is housed in a mall at the bottom of the lift system in Val de Ruda. Purpose-built, these owe more to North American notions of convenience than to our European ideal. But Tanau at 1,700m, where the Spanish royal family resides, is unquestionably cool. This collection of traditional mountain homes, including the five-star Hotel Pleta, blends with the beauty of its surroundings.

What attracts me to Baqueira is the location in more general terms. You don’t have to base yourself in the resort, but alternatively in Vielha eight miles away, or in one of the half-dozen medieval hillside villages such as Arties below Baqueira. My favourites are Arties, Salardu and Tredòs. All offer a variety of accommodation and fine restaurants tucked away down cobbled alleyways. A government-subsidised bus service links the villages between Vielha and Baqueira. But unless staying in the resort itself, a car is essential. Parking is not a problem.



Baqueira Beret is set at 1,500m in the Spanish Pyrenees

For anyone used to skiing in the Alps, a visit here requires considerable mental and temporal adjustment to the daily routine.

On my first visit, after a delayed flight to Toulouse, I arrived in the main street at 2am to find it crowded with night owls who I assumed were leaving Tiffany’s, the main nightclub, at closing time. Wrong. They were leaving restaurants after dinner and going to the club.

At 9am, when the front de neige in Val d’Isère is awash with ski classes, the gondola base in Baqueira is all but deserted. No respectable Spaniard clicks into his bindings before 10 or 11am. He skis furiously until 3pm, then has a serious lunch. After the final run home it’s time for tapas and Tempranillo until 6pm when the bars empty – it’s siesta time.

At 9pm the whole family re-emerges for drinks and tapas before dinner at 10pm. Of course, you don’t have to switch to the exhausting Iberian clock. You can dine in an otherwise empty restaurant at 8pm, but not earlier.

In springtime you need to keep an eye out for brown bears. They’ve been reintroduced to the wild here from a breeding programme based in Arties. Curiously, they tend to head for the French frontier. I can’t imagine why.

Ski Miquel (01457 821200; skimiquelholidays.co.uk) offers seven nights at Chalet-Hotel Salana at Baqueira Beret from £559 per person, on a chalet-board basis; or from £627 at four-star Hotel Montarto, on a half-board basis. Both holidays include transfers and flights from London Gatwick or Manchester (£30 supplement)