Costa Brava and the Middle Ages

Sa Tuna

Birds in St. Feliu chirp long after sunrise, when silver haired Spanish gentlemen in bermuda shorts clasp their hands behind their backs and stroll in sun and shade, formless older women trudge with baskets of towels and lotion to the beach in various house dresses, and delivery trucks stare at our license plate in mild anger when we insist on pulling out of the garage. We visited more beaches on the Costa Brava, so named for its craggy cliffsides, but this time "the gentle coast", where harbors are still and domesticated despite their cliffs which protect them from the choppy sea. The most lovely are ex-fishing villages carved into protected coves--Sa Tuna, Llafranca, and St. Feliu herself. Sa Tuna epitomizes the gentle coast, its sheltered harbor lined with red and gray cliffs that sink into placid indigo pools that reflect golden rocks beneath. There we ate---J had tripe (his own strong stomach for the cow's stomach somewhat surprising the waiter), and I had bacalaos con sampfaina--cod cooked in a deeply flavorful Catalan tomato sauce. Very slow food--and wine. Catalan cooking bring out, with sublte and deep flavoring, the already tasty produce, an order of magnitude more flavor in the market's fruits and vegetables than any you could find in Paris.

The beaches are filled with families. A distinguished matron twists an adolescent boy's arm till he kisses her, then turns away, tears falling from her expensive sunglasses. A blonde Russian teenager in a bikini kisses her dumpy mother over and over. A nearly naked brown beauty drapes her long wet hair on her boyfriend's prone body. For everywhere the family beaches are also topless, and older women lie immobile, their round breasts spread to the sky, or elegant matrons expose their firm athletic nipples, or enormous mothers sag into the sea. Obese young boys with nipples and drooping stomachs tag after their hairy and dense Spanish fathers. Little blonde princesses chase each other. Only the children keep their tops on.

Begur

Torre de Pella i Forga

Inland there is Begur, the beautiful Catalan village with 15th c. towers which defended the village from pirates, so perhaps the sea had been closer then. Built with the pesos of Indianos, a term for native boys who made their fortunes in Cuban wealth (based on the cotton fields of misery or on grocery stores) returned in the 19th c. to build their villas in estilla modernista (modern style), rafish mosaics surrounding the tall Spanish windows, gardens of palms facing south within ornate gates. Catalan metal sculpture, characters wrought of rusted metal, is everywhere. The handsome 15th c. towers that once stood in an empty dusty town are now crushed among elegant houses and the outdoor market. The Romanesque church with its Catalan gothic interior has a broad nef entered under the low Catalan arches, and an altar painted in a gloomy El Greco blue, but otherwise identical to those of the southwest of France, a few hundred km to the north. But there but they would be painted in closely drawn floral patterns and heraldic motifs, as if stretched with cloth wallpaper from Provence. We climbed the castle, but nothing was left--it had been finished off by the Napoleonic wars. A dutchman with bony white legs and white hair rode his bicycle straight up the vertical stone path to the summit.

Then I drove to Pals, a beautiful, complete and deserted medieval village, empty of tourists and markets, exuding charm. The heavy, uneven stone of its 9th c wall encircles much of it, slitted with embrasures for a clustered defense, its tonnage reinforced with the earth's own boulders, The Catalan civil wars had leveled Pals, except for the Keep, now a clock towered in the elegant Catalan baroque. The city was rebuilt, under John II, with the same stones, so that the milky narrow embrasures from which gunners and archers fired now decorate the sides of houses. The sinuous pathways and hidden gardens and stark rough old rocks made a more beautiful ensemble than Begur. Ceramics is a specialty of the area, and where examples could be found, tiny-necked round bellied jars in splashing enamels, bowls of subtly shaded or boldly dashed enamel, they were unique. We were immediately adopted by 3 old English women--what esprit de corps! Oh, how perfect! How lovely! What a fine time we're having! Now (to me) stand in the sun, dear, not behind him--smile! How the English make a charming party of it, when in same gender groups!

A restaurant in Peratallada

The church of the 15th c. was also built in the rough, defensive stone, and its chapels look like dungeons. The gothic vaults of the ceiling are deeply pleated, as if reminding one of the heavy pressures that town had endured.

We drove to the old plain 9th c. church of St. Julia de Boada, completely square with three small square towers. The old gray round inhabitants of the not-quite-village perched on walls like Humpty Dumpty and stared at us as if we had stumbled into someone's living room. Three beautiful horses with flies covering their faces paced.

St, Estevab

We drove on to a grand Romanesque church with a broad, symmetrical facade, St. Estevan. A boy wanted 2 euros 50 for parking, even though the church was closed. Jacques chose that moment to vent his Spain-inspired passions, and commanded me to drive instead onto a dusty cement plateau with a few scraggly tomato plants--an old stone farmhouse that was obviously someone's home. Sure enough, a man in a sombrero with his shirt hanging open came raging after us, and Jacques, stiff and unrepentant raged back. Privado! Jacques yelled back in Spanish, show me where it says so! (Meanwhile I drove quickly off the property, banging the bottom of our car on lumps of cement.) Go back to your country, yelled the man - evidently Jacques' Spanish accent is as bad as his English one. We would return another day, for a beautiful medieval city lay across the road, Peratallarda, with its 9th c. castle on sale for only 9 million euros.

Peratallada

Castle for sale, Peratallada