Arriving in Catalunya

Around the Mediterranean we have traveled, following the path of, it turns out, the conquering Catalans. Sicily, Sardinia, Turkey--all have been at some time Spanish. In early spring we had heard of the hated Spaniards in Sardinia, but the Catalan-gothic architecture remains a testament to the exquisite taste of Catalunya. (Even California: the intrepid friar Junipero Serra who first set up all the missions was a Catalan!) Today Catalunya plays the part of an underdog, the inferiority complex of Spain following the leaden years of Franco. Yet the Empire once ranged all over the Mediterranean.

And so, when a young Catalan couple proposed a home exchange while we were at Jacques' maison familiale in the south of France, just over the Pyrenees from Catalan San Feliu de Guixols, we replied immediately. From Léran we had driven to Collioure, a gorgeous French village with Catalan signs and crosses. Now we would be crossing the border.

Our nerves were frayed by the time the affectionate Spaniards arrived at our apartment in Paris, he a kind of aging hippy, she an ageless dark-eyed beauty with her cascade of black hair, who surely loves him for his genuine smile. Their two children (a little dark prince of 2 years and a brooding blonde princess of 3) spotted a cat inside and plunged after him with pudgy grasping hands. We were all quickly exhausted and they ventured on their own but were drenched in a quick, cold rain on the Parvis de Notre Dame. By the time we left, the dark prince would not stop kissing me--la senora de la casa des gatos.

Our street in San Feliu

We had weighed and re-weighed our luggage for Ryanair's specifications, then again at Beauvais, like a cosmic game of the Merchant of Venice, gauging our pound of flesh, struggling with our leaden caskets. The Ryanair Experienced are those who leave their dignity back in Paris, lumping and repacking their bags all over the airport floor, to make the precise weights they've paid for. Then one waits and waits and waits and then tears across the runaway to find a place in the glaring yellow vinyl atmosphere of Ryanair (no reserved seats), to endure nonstop sales pitches in an Irish sort of Spanish accent, including for smoke-free cigarettes to be smoken in flight. Invariably, as the plane lands, a recorded trumpet fanfare proclaims that once again, Ryanair has landed on time, more than any other European airline. I was reading Virginia Woolf and Jacques Celine, both of us still living inside these rarefied authors while we trudged then to the Hertz desk, where a lesbian with a boy's hair cut and vulnerable eyes switched between Catalan, French and English. As the designated driver, I drove through an endless exurbia, now past midnight, on barely lit roads through dozens of traffic circles and towns where young people lounged in the quiet night, soft as the deep blue sky. We found the 9th c. monastery of St. Feliu, down the block from the slightly kitsch but extraordinary apartment. In the children's quarters little patent leather shoes line up on shelf after shelf behind brightly decorated closet doors. Three stories of apartment and endless storage space resulted in flawless marble surfaces. It was nearly 2 when we curled up together for warmth--no blankets in any of the perfecty arranged 4 bedrooms, or endless laundry room, or perfectly labeled canisters of grains. There are sweet pictures of the couple, in white robes draped with white garlands, among South Sea wood carvings.

Monastery of St. Feliu, 9th c.

Awake, after a few hours, we searched vainly for coffee, and then for solitary serenity for my tai chi practice. So we ventured to the beach, where what we got was a blaring café-- my tai chi at the dusty edge of rapid-fire radio of American rock and roll. All over the beach people bared all except for their inner stillness. St. Feliu--too ideal a beach town to resist becoming Miami. A woman with a puppy stared at my tai chi and kept watching me, sitting close by, her face slightly crooked as if from a stroke, dark Spanish eyes, clutching a pack of cigarettes. And then we climbed an old path among junipers to a maritime monument, and found a still aerie on half-ruined walls of rough stone. And this Spanish paradise of sea and birds and bright pines and indigo waters would frame the rest of our Catalan experience.

So we found our rhythms among the junipers and cacti and rocks and affectionate noisy Spanish.

View from the back veranda

Henceforth my morning tai chi was on the veranda, where gulls wheel and scream in a frantic horde, such pure white beauty, such unbearable voices, launched from the sea a few blocks away. An enormous magnolia tree heralds the sun, the flora very similar to the south of France. A few birds chatter, but here it is the wheeling, screaming seagulls and wild parrots that begin the day. The exquisite weather-stained 19th c. houses cluster around the garden of magnolia and fig and cacti and dates trees. I ventured to the rooftop but the jumbled roofs and menacing gold sky present a harsh world without these gardens.

the market

In fact, we came quickly to treasure St. Feliu de Guixols, a real (if somewhat carnivalesque) village (with Fellini-esque touches--the carousels, the beach, the market). Some of Costa Brava, that northern Mediterranean Coast, was overly and vulgarly developed in a giddy rush after Franco's fall. Other villages, inland, are motionless, or filled with trinkets and real estate offices. In San Feliu the marketplace, in the town square of beautiful 1930's buildings, is overflowing with bounty: green, red, brilliant gold, sunripened flavors beyond any in Paris, families, old frumpy people in shorts and flapping sun hats, and the occasional elegant dona (we would see her later lying topless, her tight breasts and fleshy nipples tanning by the sea). And the smiles--even as the old lady wanted you to move in the supermarket aisle, or the cashier inquired about your credit card, their generous smiles invite you to laugh at life.

The San Feliu monastary is a remant of Catalon's glory, proof of a high culture where now everyone wears sundresses and thongs. But then it was the oppressor, the Catalan Benedictine Abbey, built in the 10th c. in a southern pre-Romanesque style, Visigoth arches with their full curve, rough stones piled together in the vault in no sturdy ordering, difficult to believe they can support the soaring ceiling. We climbed to the upper porch with its 10th c. arches, while the actual nave soars much higher.

San Feliu in prison, visited by angels

San Feliu de Guixols can be traced to an Iberian settlement from as far back as the 4th c., though no doubt there had been earlier peoples at this sheltered harbor backed up by protective mountains. Romans, who had invaded Catalunya in the 3rd c. BC in the course of the Punic Wars, had left behind the foundations of buildings, and the legend of the town remembers the eponymous saint from North Africa who came to these shores during the persecutions of the Roman Emperor Diocletian. Felix's ministry was meant to have ended when the Romans dropped him into the sea from the hill of Guixols with a millstone around his neck, but he miraculously pierced a rock through which angels appeared to save him. Other trials, like being dragged by horses in Gerundra, now Girone, are chronicled in the glorious retable now on display in the museum of Girone, the nearest major urban center. Thus when the Benedictine monks arrived n the 10th c., the site's holiness and Roman building foundations were as persuasive as the village's strategic location.

Benedictine table

The strict Benedictine order allowed monks only one meal a day (two in summer) and required a carefully timed balance of prayer and works (ora et labora). The well-ordered monastery came to control not only its faithful (who nonetheless rebelled against the food regime) but the surrounding area, acquiring the role of a feudal lord. Thus when civil wars arose pitting serf against oppressive lords in the late middle ages, the village of San Feliu began its long push back to become its own master. By the 19th c. the theme of hunger recurred--most families lived at the level of malnutrition. A single heroic doctor served the wide region, procuring stone houses of the countryside for those quarantined with tuberculosis, where their families could cook for them. Pictures of that century show a charming, full-lifed village, supported by fishing and culturally developed.

San Feliu with the tyrant Rufus

The afternoon became oppressive as we ventured along the rough Mediterranean to the red cliffs on which bright green windblown trees curve against the brilliant sky. The sea played dark indigo games with the incised red rocks and glitters below in passages where knives of light strike among hidden chambers. And then the evening passagietta was filled with strolling Catalans, cafe's brimming again, the sea now flattened steel with yet a few swimmers, the restaurants still empty at 8:30pm, while people strolled and breathed the evening blessings. The same streets were now magical in cool flares of light, its toy museum with a tiny carousel, dogs greeting one another, overjoyed. A village that loves life.