The day George Harrison climbed the wall at Salvador Dalí’s surreal summer house didn’t take place for another week and during those seven days a large number of red roses crossed the village. It began one sultry afternoon in 1971 when Dalí returned to Cadaqués with Carlos Lozano after inspecting the geodesic dome being […]
Tag Archives: Cadaques
THE HIDDEN HILLS OF CADAQUES
1984. Late spring. Armed with a hand-drawn map, a bag of figs and some tangerines, we set out to climb what our friend Eloy Ferrer had called the hidden hills of Cadaqués. The journey by train from Barcelona to Figueres took two hours and two more over the Big Dipper of a road with the bus fishtailing […]
THE BIRTH OF CADAQUES
The birth of Cadaqués did not come about by chance. In the year 945, thirty years after the completion of the great monastery Sant Pere de Rodes, the wily abbot had a plan. With a party of broad-shouldered monks, the abbot set out on the sixty minute journey from the gates of the monastery, down […]
JOSEP PLA WAS MY FIRST SPANISH TEACHER
Josep Pla was my first Spanish teacher. If I drop the odd anachronism into the conversation, don’t blame me, blame the great Catalan writer, journalist, bon vivant and, it has been said, forerunner of magic realism. It all started after spending Semana Santa climbing the dirt track to Sant Pere de Rodes with my wife […]
CASA ANITA IN CADAQUES
Casa Anita in 1984 was still a well-kept secret, The Ritz for those with a bohemian spirit and a taste for fresh fish that has leapt straight out of the sea and landed on the grill. Named after the effervescent owner, Anita was a beautiful woman with dark lustrous eyes, hair black as coal and […]
SELVA DE LA MAR
The first time I visited the monastery at Sant Pere de Rodes was on a stone track that led out of the village of Selva de la Mar. There was no road and the climb up the almost vertical gradient took two hours. It was Semana Santa 1984. I was with my wife Valerie and two […]
SANT PERE DE RODES
In the story of Cadaqués, the monastery Sant Pere de Rodes has always played a major role. The vast Benedictine stronghold with unscalable walls looms over the surrounding countryside just ten kilometres around the coast from the village. The Benedictines first came to this remote corner of Iberia at the end of the 9th century when […]
MOORS ON THE COAST
‘Moors on the coast,’ someone shouted. The men shielded their eyes from the sun and watched as a fleet of galleys crossed the horizon. As the ships moved closer, driven by the jerking movement of the rowers, the watchman out on the cape could make out the square-rigged sails and long black flags snapping like […]
Salvador Dali Brings Simon Baker to Cadaqués
An album – a feast, a spectrum, a kaleidoscope – of some of the world’s best photography opens in the streets, bars and galleries of Cadaqués on 1 October 2021 at the start of the InCadaqués International Festival of Photography – now in its fifth year – the second year of Covid. The best? Absolutely. After […]