Postcard from: Cadaques

e t yourself to Spain G

Head east

After a two-hour bus ride from Barcelona, the last part along a twisting mountain road with the sea sparkling below, I arrived in Cadaques. This Costa Brava town is the easternmost in Spain and sits on the craggy Cap de Creus peninsula which stretches into the cobalt Mediterranean, just below the French border.

Cadaques is a town of whitewashed houses hugging a natural harbour bobbing with fishing boats. The narrow, uneven streets of the old town are a maze, where vivid blue and green doors and shuttered windows contrast with the pink bougainvillea that spills down the walls. Cats snooze on the warm cobbles and Catalan flags flutter from balconies.

Emerging on to the seafront, the dazzling Mediterranean light hits you. It’s this that attracted so many artists to the town, including Matisse, Picasso and Salvador Dali, whose statue stands nonchalantly on the beach, his back to the sea, legs crossed and a stick held like a jaunty fashion statement rather than a walking aid.

Saul Mercado/unsplash.com

hector-j-rivas/unsplash.com

Ola Kucha/unsplash.com

Cadaques, topped by the church of Santa Maria

The mad house

We visited Dali’s house yesterday, in the little village of Port Lligat, next to Cadaques. Perched above a sandy bay, the tiny fishing shack he originally bought is now a huge angular white house of rambling passages with secret staircases and dead-ends. It gives you the sense you’re wandering through an octopus.

Just like his surrealist paintings, it’s full of weird perspectives, with angled floors and odd-shaped windows framing the forget-me-not sea. It’s also peppered with an eccentric collection of objects, ranging from a taxidermy polar bear to a PVC pink sofa shaped like lips, and several giant alabaster eggs which balance precariously on the terracotta-tiled roofs.

I’m writing this from a restaurant, the French windows open onto the street so I can people watch and smell the flowers clinging to the balcony above. I must stop writing because my dinner is here – a classic Catalan dish called arros negro (black rice), made with prawns, squid and its ink.