Historical and cultural context

Our route begins in a charming town, and which has managed to preserve it despite the outbreak of tourism throughout the 20th century. This charm has not gone unnoticed by dozens of artists who have spent periods of their lives there and have left hundreds of high-quality works. The Collioure Museum of Modern Art explains the appeal of this town in Roussillon for artists from all over (from Japan to Southern Catalonia, passing through Germany, Poland and Switzerland), since the stay of Henri Matisse and André Derain in 1905.

The next painting is Femmes au fillet de pesque by Valentine Prax.

The sensual Collioure of the phallic tower, the one with the exotic garden of palm trees and coconut trees by Charles Naudin, the one with the sparkling sea where a little sail boat glides, the one in the Machado cemetery and the flowery curtains that undulate in the wind, have ended up occupying a mythical place in the history of modern art because in the spring of 1905 Henri Matisse arrived. And then artists from all over the world continued to arrive, most of them attracted, it is true, by the legend left by the old master, but also, as would happen simultaneously in Ceret, Tossa, Arles or Cadaqués, because that rural Mediterranean represented an oasis of light and peace in the increasingly dark Europe between the wars.

If you have time, it is worth spending at least a couple of days in Collioure, the vertex that joins the routes From the Pyrenees to the Sea and Cotlliure – Cadaqués.

The landscape on the Roussillon side is dominated by the vineyard, especially in the second stage, because we will cross the land of Banyuls wine, an ancient territory and an inveterate culture, probably the oldest at this end of the Mediterranean.

Banyuls wine is a natural sweet wine from Northern Catalonia with the Banyuls designation of origin, highly valued as a dessert wine, which covers the municipalities of Banyuls de la Marenda, Collioure, Portvendres and Cervera de la Marenda. The vineyards grow on shale soil with little fertility, on steep terraces in the foothills of the Sierra de la Albera.

Banyuls wines have a long tradition. The vineyard was imported by the Greeks, under the influence of the Empúries colony. In the Middle Ages, the Templars influenced local viticulture by building dry stone walls and a channeling network for streams and streams. The appellation of origin was created in 1936.

Strong wind, hot Mediterranean sun and relatively low rainfall contribute to their intense character, but it is the winemaking process that defines them. The inconvenience of the sloping terrain, which the scant but violent rains can skin to the bone, gave rise to the technique of stepped dry stone terraces, sometimes no more than two meters wide.

The highest point of the journey, and where we will cross the border, is Mount Querroig, where we will find the remains of a castle. Querroig Castle is an old medieval castle from the 10th–11th centuries located on the top of Mount Querroig, at the point where the municipalities of Portbou (Alt Empordà) and Banyuls de la Marenda and Cervera de la Marenda (Rosselló) meet. A watchtower was built on the ruins of the castle in the 14th-15th centuries.

The surviving remains of the castle, very pitted and dating back to the 10th-11th centuries, indicate that it was a construction with a rather unique plan, with sinuous walls. The enclosure, according to the preserved sections, must have followed the shape of the upper plane of the mount. In the middle of this defined plan are the remains of a large keep with a very long rectangular plan. The Querroig Tower was built in the 14th – 15th centuries on the ruins of the castle, specifically on the collapsed walls of the keep and the castle wall. It is a cylindrical watchtower, built with large stones cut and bound with mortar.

The construction of the international railway station and the opening of the railway line in 1872 boosted the growth of what was a small nucleus of inhabitants. Previously, it had been a cove with fishermen’s shacks where they sought refuge when the sea required it. Perhaps this explains the origin of its name: the drag boats known as oxen. Although another hypothesis defends that in the past, the Portbou cove was known as Port Bo (“Good port”). Indeed, the waters of the small bay of Portbou enter very deep, protecting the bay from the east and the north wind that blows in the entire Empordà area.

Located at the eastern end of the Albera mountain range (the last foothills of the Pyrenees that reach the Mediterranean), administratively it forms part of the Alt Empordà region and, touristically, it is the northern limit of the Costa Brava. Bordering the neighboring region of Roussillon (Northern Catalonia) and the town of Cervera, its position as a border area has given it a peculiar identity and has determined the life of its inhabitants. A smuggling post and fishermen’s refuge, it gradually became populated with the arrival of the railway at the end of the 19th century. The road reached Portbou in 1918 and the section up to the Belitres pass (French border) two years later. The Universal Exhibition of Barcelona in 1929 involved the construction of a new railway station, an emblematic modern building with a great presence that has been preserved to this day.

In the fourth stage we will pass by the Monastery of Sant Pere de Rodes (11th century), which stands on one of the peaks of the Serra de Rodes, a ridge on the seafront to the north of the Alt Empordà. It is one of the numerous testimonies of Catalan Romanesque architecture, but it is perhaps one of the most architecturally sophisticated. From the 11th to the 14th century it was the main spiritual center of the county of Empúries and its splendor is shown in the large dimensions of the monastic complex.

The monastery was built on the northern slope of the Verdera mountain, on a level below the Verdera castle, which gave it protection. From the ruins of the old monastery, one can enjoy an exceptional view over the entire sector of the coast located to the north of Cap de Creus, in particular the bays of Port de la Selva and Llançà. To the northwest of the monastery, shortly before arriving, are the remains of the medieval town of Santa Creu de Rodes, among which the church of Santa Helena de Rodes stands out. It is currently managed by the Catalan Agency for Cultural Heritage.

Throughout the entire journey, from the Marenda vineyards to Cap de Creus, we will find dry stone elements along the way. The history of this territory that concerns us is closely linked to dry stone, in fact “it is an immense stone garden” as the writer Josep Pla said. The art of dry stone was inscribed on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO on November 28, 2018. The traditional architecture has survived the passage of time as a testimony to the ways of life of the past. Within this great family, dry stone was undoubtedly one of the most used techniques. Thanks to the knowledge accumulated over the centuries, all kinds of constructions were built, mostly linked to agriculture, livestock and water supply, which allowed our ancestors to tame nature and grow economically.

Source: del Parc Natural del Cap de Creus site

We finish the journey in Cadaqués, a beautiful town in itself, but known internationally for being the habitual residence of Salvador Dalí, where he built a house that we cannot miss.

The current House-Museum of Portlligat was the only stable house of Salvador Dalí; the place where he habitually lived and worked until, in 1982, with the death of Gala, he took up residence in the Castell de Púbol. Salvador Dalí settled in 1930 in a small fisherman’s hut in Portlligat, attracted by the landscape, the light and the isolation of the place. From that initial construction, he created his house for 40 years. As he himself defined it, it was “like a true biological structure […]. Each new impulse of our life corresponded to a new cell, a chamber.”

The resulting shape is the current labyrinthine structure that, starting from a point of origin, the Bear Hall, is dispersed and screwed into a succession of spaces linked by narrow passages, small slopes and dead-end routes. These spaces, filled with countless objects and memories of the Dalí family, are decorated with resources that make them especially warm: rugs, lime, dried flowers, velvet upholstery, antique furniture, etc. In addition, all the rooms have openings, of different shapes and proportions, which frame the same landscape, a constant reference in Dalí’s work: the bay of Portlligat.

Regarding his habitual residence, Salvador Dalí stated: “Portlligat is the place of achievements. It is the perfect place for my work. Everything conspires to make it so: time passes more slowly and each hour has its right dimension. There is geological tranquility: it is a unique planetary case”.

A good final visit for a journey in this territory touched by the Tramuntana.

Fuente: web https://www.salvador-dali.org