Postcards from the Costa Brava

 

I’ve spent half my life listening to the Costa Brava, reading the wonders that have been written about the area even by gentlemen like Josep Pla, that’s nothing; half a life wanting to visit a corner of Spain that, unfortunately, is a bit far from my town.

I did it, lastly, last summer, on one of those trips that has many ballots to become a disappointment: it was impossible not to have very high hopes and that, u, is dangerous.

But no, in such a case there is no need to worry: the beauty of the coves and the towns of the Costa Brava surpasses without any inconvenience any previous expectation. In few places the Mediterranean has a purity like that, in almost none the coast has been preserved in spite of the overwhelming human presence, and there are not many that I have known that they continue to have so much charm despite tourism.

Coves and beaches, the pearl of Catalonia

I think that when visiting the Costa Brava by boat what stays most in memory are the incredible coves: small, practically hidden, in front of an incredibly clear water that allows us to see the rocky bottom even several meters deep.

Most of those I met were not sand but rather small little stones not too comfortable to walk but to lie in the sun or, better yet, in the shade of the pines that come almost to the edge of the water .

Coves in which even when there are people there are fewer people and, above all, usually coves that can be chosen: today this, tomorrow to the one next door, passed to the other one that is 5 minutes away.

Many of these small beaches of the Costa Brava have a small defect and a great secret: the first is that floor of which they chatted, gravel in many cases, rock in others, sand in the least; the second are the roads of ronda, roads that cross the coast by the high part of the cliffs, in many sections under the exquisite surplus of the pines, always and in all circumstance on the crystalline water and with those views that, already before Visit the area, we thought they were only from a couple of sites photographed to infinity.

The villages

I did not go through all of them, obviously, but the impression you get when you get to know the Costa Brava is that in a few places on the coast you have managed to preserve so many charming villages, the most famous ones like Cadaqués -the one I told you about here. some time-, to others less known but also precious: Calella de Palafruguell, Tossa de Mar, Llafranc

Narrow streets, whitewashed, many of them in slope, looking at a sea that always and in all circumstances or almost always is present, full of people who walk and enjoy. They are peoples who live close to the sea in a sense far from the physical or the geographical: there is a kind of symbiosis between the white houses and the small beaches in perfect bays, with the boats ready to sail at any moment and the water calm and clean.