CADAQUES – PORTLLIGAT. WORDS & PHOTOGRAPHY BY manu da costa.

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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 ronda, a surrealistically long journey from one point to the other, although it is exceptionally beautiful. Dalí himself was known to be a lover of this camino (path), and he took it frequently. The camino de ronda is a coastal path that follows the steep Catalonian coast of the Costa Brava between the towns of Blanes and Portbou. It’s a historical path that was created to connect the various towns, beaches and coves of the coast. While it assured that fishermen and sailors could return to their ports of origin should their boats crash on the rocks, it was mainly used to control smuggling.

A Daliesque reminder hangs around every corner of this unforgettable Mediterranean town. When walking along its steep and narrow streets with their flower-filled windows, it’s inevitable that some of the Catalonian painter’s paintings might come to mind, such as Figure at a window, The Weaning of Furniture- Nutrition or The Spectre of Sex Appeal, in which you can see profiles of the town and its surroundings.

Cadaqués inspired Dalí, and Dalí inspired Cadaqués.

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Piece with Artist MAGAZINE ISSUE 00. JUNE 2022. © www.piecewithartist.com