Shaped by the hand of man and the north wind

Even if it is not ad­min­is­tra­tively recog­nised as such, the Em­pordà re­gion is a united en­tity. When far from home, the peo­ple of Figueres, Palafrugell and L’Es­cala recog­nise them­selves as Em­pordà peo­ple. The Em­pordà plain has suf­fered from large-scale human in­ter­ven­tion, mainly based on the des­ic­ca­tion of its wet­lands and in­crease in the agri­cul­tural and urban area. A large net­work of canals has pro­vided it with an in­valu­able ir­ri­ga­tion sys­tem, mak­ing it one of the coun­try’s most no­table places. Josep Pla, the most ’Em­pordà’ of writ­ers, did not hes­i­tate to de­scribe it as a mag­nif­i­cent ex­am­ple of civ­i­liza­tion.

The Tra­muntana north wind has served as the artist’s hand, mod­el­ling a land­scape in which peo­ple have cre­ated struc­tures to with­stand its on­slaught, from the dry walls on the edges of houses to the cy­press trees be­tween fields, which gen­er­ate a vi­sual struc­ture of great value.

Those who pre­fer nat­ural val­ues will find them mainly along the coast, in the pro­tected area of the Aiguamolls, sec­ond only to the Ebre Delta in Cat­alo­nia in terms of nat­ural wet­lands. The Al­bera, Cap de Creus, the Montgrí, the Baix Ter, the Medes Is­lands, the Gavar­res and the Ar­dennes also offer nu­mer­ous na­ture-based ex­cur­sions.

The Em­pordà plain has al­most end­less at­trac­tions, and if vis­i­tors pre­fer an­cient his­tory and human set­tle­ments, they will find ex­am­ples in Roses and Empúries to the north, where Greeks and Ro­mans left very im­por­tant im­prints, to­gether with the Iber­ian site of Ul­las­tret, the largest in Cat­alo­nia.

Many in­land vil­lages re­tain the me­dieval flair that saw them grow in the shadow of the feu­dal lords, who left im­ages of their glory days in cas­tles, palaces, for­ti­fied farm­houses and many other con­struc­tions im­pos­si­ble to list in this short space. A jour­ney from north to south could start at the cas­tle of Re­que­sens, in Can­tallops, in the mid­dle of the Al­bera nat­ural park. We then jump to Castelló d’Empúries, where the Mid­dle Ages open their doors to us, from the Basil­ica of Santa Maria (Em­pordà Cathe­dral, the Jew­ish quar­ter and the prison to the walls and many other spots.

The Montgrí mas­sif, crowned by the un­fin­ished cas­tle of the same name, is an­other ref­er­ence point to begin dif­fer­ent his­tor­i­cal routes. Not far away, we find the cas­tle of Bell­caire d’Em­pordà which was, for many years, a rea­son for dis­cord be­tween the counts of Empúries and the monar­chy. In fact, the counts stayed in the cas­tle of Bell­caire and the monar­chy, in turn, began to build the cas­tle of Montgrí to as­sert its power. It was not fin­ished, how­ever, as the king fi­nally kept the cas­tle of Bell­caire. An­other ex­am­ple of a land full of me­dieval build­ings. But if vis­i­tors pre­fer other types of routes, the Pals rice route will en­chant them, with El Molí de Pals at its epi­cen­tre, lo­cated at the south­ern end of the Montgrí Nat­ural Park near the Ter gorge, sur­rounded by rice fields and an­chored on the Rec del Molí. This route can also be done by train from the old town of Pals.

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