Girone and Montgris

On el Calle

Leisurely, lovely Girone, built on Roman walls of the then Gerundra, is the cultural center. We wandered the old city on La Rambla, the old stone road, but the most beautiful steets belonged to the Jews from the 9th c to 1492.  Nobby gold-red stone. closely fitted houses of Catalan balconies and winding low steps up through the dark but immaculate quarter of low arched wooden doors, and its memories of distinguished Jews whose names also appeared on the fine metalwork in the Cathedral.

Jacob wrestling with the Angel, Cathedral cloister

The winding Calle (Jewish quarter) leads up to the Cathedral, flat pale and bulky with a Baroque facade of big white saints, but on one side an intricate fold of a Romanesque-gothic arch hints at the missing statues all torn away. Inside is an enormous dark gothic vault, mighty and stern, with a three-nave choir, but an immense single nave of chapels, mostly baroque. The 12th c. cloister is exquisite, with carved stone columns from Bible stories and mythical beasts, and Charlemagne's throne.

Jewish Calle

Girone calls itself the city of Charlemagne, once having been a major Roman city, Gerunda, trapezoidal like the cloister which buttresses the Cathedral and the ramparts of the old 12th c. city. Charlemagne brought his itinerant court there and established the Spanish Marches, the outlying sections of his empire, that he had wrested from the Moors. We wandered around the bulky Cathedral which meant taking labyrinthine streets, and after lunch walked up among pines and stone battlements to descend to the so-called Arab baths, a Romanesque reconstruction of Roman baths with Moorish touches and Romanesque capitals of grace. In the successive rooms are the classic frigidarium, tepidarium, the various stages of hot and cold that Romans enjoyed in their baths, including massage. 

Cloister of Sant Pere Galligant

Then we visited the Monastery of Sant Pere Galligant and, with expanding relief, entered the portal with its flying horses and its strange rose made of small columns in a wheel, little Romanesque figures of the abbot and his monks. The majestic interior silenced us with the authority and beauty of its perfect Romanesque vaults. The walls were stone vestiges of the Roman city that had preceded it. The simple cloister was surrounded by sarcophagi, including a celebrated tomb with the seasons portrayed as busy cherubs. The church doubles as the archeological museum, and in the upper rooms were stones and flinty instruments and panels of neolithic and paleolithic and iron age Spaniards becoming Romanized, with the complete erasure of the Iberic culture.

Sant Pere de Galligant, 11th c.

Montgris (on the right)

Torroella de Montgris is a medieval town buried deeply in narrow checkerboard blocks till you get to the stone palaces tucked around a few still lovely squares. Then you uncover wealth and Spanish elegance in the half disks of highly polished wood doors, gardens and grillwork and stone stairs leading to stained glass windows. We ate an amazingly good lunch of salads (hot chevre on a bed of exquisite green and walnuts) at 5pm and inquired about the castle of Montgris, visible from miles around. We drove to the industrial edge of the city and on baked earth and scrubby bushes and succulents we began the gravelly and then boulder climb up the massive granite col. 

Kids imitating dad in Toroella de Montgris

Difficult footing and vertical stretches lead you past empty stone chapels and glimpses of the castle. Exuberant Germans, a Spanish family of overweight parents climbing with staffs and their topless 7-yr old daughter, fierce-eyed and nostriles flaring. The castle was never finished. It remains a monumental rectangle with towers you can climb for the magnificent smoky distances. A light rain cooled us. 

Climbing Montgris

Downwards I led, following green arrows precipitously in vertical, blind descents (J fell once) that led to the hidden recesses of a cavee, splashed in black rose travertine and smelling of smoke, with rapelling gear drilled into its ceiling. It is called Cau del Duc, and had been inhabited 300,000 years ago.

glimpse of the castle

View from the castle

11th c. castle of Montgris

Cau del Duc