Visiting Spain - Suggestions for holidays, trains, itineraries, day-trips, and sightseeing from someone who has lived and traveled extensively in Spain
| Airlines that Fly to Mallorca The following is a list of airlines that fly to Mallorca's Palma de Mallorca Airport... Car Rental in Spain Many people visiting Spain choose to rent a car upon arrival for all or part of their v... | Travel Health Insurance Spain When traveling to Spain, many visitors choose to purchase travel health insurance ... Trains from Madrid to Barcelona There are two types of trains you can take from Madrid to Barcelona: high speed trains... |
Spain’s Wild Coast
By SARAH WILDMAN
ON the small roads between Cantallops and Llançà — two names that were barely dots on our map of Catalonia in northeastern Spain — the lush mountain greenery turned quickly to farmland rolling out for miles around us and filled with sunflowers and bales of hay.
We were traveling from the interior mountains of this Spanish autonomous region to the Mediterranean. Again and again, rising up in the near distance, came fantastic, if dusty, terra-cotta-colored medieval hamlets and equally ancient churches and farmhouses. On the streets everywhere the lingua franca was Catalan, not Spanish, and amid all the tourists that descend from France and elsewhere, a local pride seemed to pervade the scene, against a backdrop that fell away suddenly, breathtakingly, into the sea.
In Llançà we stopped at Platja Grifeu, one of the village’s perfect beaches, with clear tropical-looking water to swim in. At the beachside restaurant, I ordered a tortilla española, the ubiquitous potato omelet of Spain. It was, improbably, the best tortilla I had ever tasted. I savored it, facing the sea and the local families sunning themselves, in this tiny village about 10 miles from the French-Spanish border on a road that looked like nothing more than a scribble on the map.
By some small miracle — and preservation efforts that have helped to control development in Catalonia — the Costa Brava has maintained an authenticity and a refreshing resistance to change that keeps this stretch of the Mediterranean radically different from the southern coasts of Spain. Fishing villages still feel like fishing villages, medieval mountain towns are still hushed at siesta, and artists still paint on the streets of Cadaqués. Tourists can mingle with residents, in the high season when a mini-United Nations cacophony of conversation fills the streets, and in the late spring and early fall, when visitors are fewer and more local.
