Dali’s Town
CADAQUES - PORTLLIGAT. WORDS & PHOTOGRAPHY BY manu da costa.
Cadaqués is one of the most characteristic towns of the Costa Brava landscape, located in Catalonia, Spain. A town of white houses, with a seafaring tradition, located on a bay of crystalline waters. In the second half of the 20th century, Cadaqués filled with artists and Bohemians, including the famous surrealist painter, Salvador Dalí, and his wife, Gala. To be more precise, the house where Dalí and his wife lived until her death in 1982 is located on the bay next to that of Cadaqués, called Portlligat, which is an area of the municipality of Cadaqués.
The house was built from several fisherman’s shacks that the artist periodically bought over the years, eventually creating a labyrinthine mansion, a succession of spaces linked by narrow hallways, unevenness and dead-ends. All the rooms have openings of different shapes and sizes, referring to a constant in Dalí’s work: the bay of Portlligat. The house itself is a great surrealist work, with a certain Kitsch air.
“I’m inseparable from this sky, this sea and these rocks. I’m permanently connected to Portlligat.”
And then there’s the Cadaqués-Portlligat route along the famous camino de...