Cadaqués has always been one of the best-kept treasures of the Catalan coast, isolated by the mountains from the rest of the territory and in perfect harmony with its sea.
The isolation was so strong during its history that the Catalan they speak here, apparently, has a lot of peculiarities that differentiate it from the ordinary one. But of course, not all have been advantages in this great location: a port near the Pyrenees and Cape Creus was a delicious treat for those who toured the Mediterranean Sea in past times. For example, the not so friendly Berber pirates, who assaulted and burned the place to kidnap and sell its inhabitants as slaves.
A long time before, Charlemagne's Franks were also settled here, fortifying the area and clearing the horizon of Muslims. In any case, we cannot say that there is much left from that warlike character in this town full of white houses and which, above all, it has been dedicated to fishing for centuries and centuries.
The façade of the Church of Santa María is also painted in white. It was erected in the seventeenth century and remains in the middle of the old town to finish a set that, honestly, is a wonder full of delights and very photogenic.
But what happens is that so much charm and so many photographies become known sooner or later, with mountains or without them. Hence, in the nineteenth century, people with potential started to appear in the village who contributed to increasing the beauty of Cadaqués with modernist houses such as the surprising Serinyana, built just in front of Playa Grande.
Next would be a parade of celebrities of the artistic avant-garde of that time: Duchamp, Picasso, Miró, Buñuel or Breton, to say a few, joined the holidaymakers and spent good times looking at this sea and doing their artistic things.
But no one like Dalí did, of course. The genius of the twisted moustache knew this place since he was a child, and lived and worked here for several decades until the eighties. He bought a group of fishermen’s houses in Portlligat Bay and turned them into a mazy and Dalinian home, with rooms such as the Recibidor del Oso or the Oval Room and, of course, all of it spiced up with extraordinary elements everywhere.
Today houses the House-Museum of the artist, and it seems that Salvador liked it mainly because from here he could be the first person in the peninsula to greet the sun’s rays of the new day. We haven’t said it yet, but it happens that Cadaqués is the most eastern town in all of Spain.
Don’t you dare walking past it!
