Along the Costa Brava

Castello Palafolls

By lofty winding roads that overlook a wilderness that stretches down to the sea, hillsides are covered with pine and shiny dark leaves, but the main fragrance is that of manure on fields. Rustic scrubs and high round pines surrounded us in the Mediterranean suburbs as we radiated outward, first to the ruin of Castello Palafolls. The castle dates back as far as the 9th c., when a small fortress became more important as a guardian of the Royal Road to Barcelona. Its layers of half standing stone walls and arches suggesting a complex of dwellings and defenses, high in the blue skies with armies of clouds converging and dispersing, continually added to through th 16th c till it became one of the largest (albeit utterly ruined) castles of the region. Below us spread agriculture, trimmed neatly into verdant patches, in the distance the Pyrenees, wildlife preserves and rivers. Not far was the sea, but before it are ugly rashes of suburban development. I found a handsome leather belt lying in a long forgotten chamber of the Castello, among the ruins and rocks and perfect Roman arches. A complete one room stone house still stands, as well as a restored Roman church from which we peered through the slanted slits through which armaments once aimed. The castello was deserted except for a few boys, a cyclist, and a forest official on lunch break.

Castello Palafolls

Then we drove to the sea, but what we found was oppressive. The popular Lloret de Mar is an extended toxic suburb of discos, erotic dancing, amuseument, garish hotels, American fast food, the beach front cemented over, the facade of stores crammed together. But then there is the truly beautiful Tosse de Mar--red outcroppings rising in the water to the brilliant green pines, the reddish sand covered with green chaises and colorful umbrellas. A jetty of boulders separates two long beaches, and in the west is a medieval city, intact walls rising up the cliffs, hiding a third, wilder beach against massive rocks and plunging cliffs. We ate grilled sardines at a beach-facing restaurant, feeding their startled heads to a famished cat with enormous frightened eyes. Then we walked up the 10th c. medieval city, where a hollowed out Catalan gothic church remains, to a summit of pine and cacti where the lighthouse stood, past archaic stone houses and people's actual houses, climbing the medieval city with well-tended terraces, but nary a soul visible. We walked along the old battlements, whose crenellations once provided niches for pouring boiling oil on invaders.

Cova d'en Daina

Another elegant beach commuity was S'Agaro, established before Franco's reign, in the 20's. But following upon that was the more appalling commercial blight of Palamos, of interest because an American jet was shot down there in the 50's, and was found to have an atomic bomb on board. A little known fact: during the cold war American jets roamed the Mediterranean carrying atomic bombs, ust in case. Franco's Minister came to swim in these waters to reassure the Catalans that all was well. Under Franco, Catalans were not even allowed to speak their own language.

Discussing Franco, we ascended to a rustic haven of enormous diversity, pines like umbrellas and those skirts, shimmering cottonwoods and cork trees and gigantic sycamores and various trees with dark oily leaves and acacias' feathery fern leaves, tumbling through green gorges, with huge ancient red stone farmhouses and strips of land with tall corn and leafy crops and always the cheerful round pines that reach exuerantly upward. We reached a grove of cork trees writhing over red rock along giant granite boulders gathering along a solemn pathway. At the end of it was a dolmen, Cova d'en Daina, from 2200-1700BC. The corridor to the graves of the dead is made of giant slabs surrounded by a circle of stones. This dolmen was rebuilt from the stones found upon the site. Its entrance was toward the southeast, so that the chamber of the dead could catch the rising sun at sacred times of the year. Jewelry and pottery and human remains have been found here, where stillness and gravity reign, in a region where we have not seen much gravity at all. We circled it and imagined the enormous effort of hauling this tonnage for the dead.

Romanya de la Selva

Further along the wild protected woods we wandered the stone passages of Romanya da Selva, a medieval village from the 10th c. The Romanesque church is dedicated to St. Martin, patron saint of soldiers, knights and tailors. And then we drove back through the sylvan haven to the highways, where traffic circles roll around large outdoor art, often of recycled industrial waste, sometimes just the waste itself, rusted factory and farm equipment. Beyond the commercial jumble Palafrugell is Calella, one of the ravishing former fishing villages that has become a resort of architectural elegance retaining the organic simplicity of the old village, beaches broken up by jetties include islands of living rock rising from the sea where people dive and bask. We had paella in a tavern where a young pregnant cat insisted on my lap in an ecstasy of affection. When the cat finally jumped off my lap to attend to a table where food had finally been served, a young mother sitting at the next table hugged her baby triumphantly. Meanwhile the gentleman whose food the cat was eyeing cast imploring looks at me, no one sure of my connection to the cat.

San Sebastian Lighthouse

Mt. San Sebastian has the most powerful lighthouse of this coast, an elegant white cylinder whirling in a 19th c. contraption. Up a dirt path we found a 15th c. watchtower and the remains of a 6th c BC Iberic settlement, with foundations of 2-room houses in exquisite roseate rock, where Greek vases and bronze foundries have occupied this sublime height of junipers over the plunge into stark indigo and white waters. The Iberic peoples were indigenous tribes who, because of the influx of Greek fishers and traders, attained a certain cultural coherence which did not survive the Roman soldiers. Trade with the Mediterranean has been established by the artifacts found, including a Medusa's head. We lingered in the ancient stillness, where a statue to St. Baldini, eerily baroque, stands in a little chapel. But more sacred was the sublime quiet and powerful sun, in the hazing sky. We could trace our path below, the rhythmic series beaches we had visited, rosy inlets between slices of cliff. I slept briefly in the Mediterranean aerie, and then drove on.

Costa Brava

At home we finally plunged into the Mediterranean, stretching our hot muscles and lying under humid round clouds with the sea at our feet.