The lunar landscape of Pla de Tudela

Dalí wrote: “This part be­tween the Camell and the Àguila that you know and love as much as I my­self is and must con­tinue to al­ways be pure ge­ol­ogy. It is a mytho­log­i­cal place made for gods rather than men and it must con­tinue as it is.” Dalí was writ­ing about the Pla de Tudela. His words were from 1960, but years later he at­tended the in­au­gu­ra­tion of the Club Med hol­i­day vil­lage that turned the area into a re­sort. Josep Pla wrote: “I was sad­dened that Pla de Tudela, so ex­tra­or­di­nar­ily priv­i­leged and so loved by me, was des­e­crated. I wish it was the way I al­ways knew it, in its prim­i­tive and wild state.” It was there that in 1965 the sur­re­al­ist painter, who con­sid­ered the rocky land­scape to be sim­i­lar to what one could find on the moon, held a space party that pre­ceded the ar­rival of thou­sands of tourists look­ing to enjoy the bun­ga­lows, swim­ming pools and leisure cen­tres that it hosted until 2003, when sense was re­stored and, after a process of restora­tion that lasted until 2009, the Pla de Tudela re­cov­ered its orig­i­nal image.

Today, the space be­tween Cadaqués and the Cap de Creus light­house is sign­posted, al­low­ing vis­i­tors to fol­low an ac­ces­si­ble itin­er­ary that re­veals one of the most spec­tac­u­lar cor­ners of the Cap de Creus Nat­ural Park, a wild beauty cre­ated by water ero­sion and the ’tra­muntana’ north wind over mil­lions of years. Its whim­si­cal ge­o­log­i­cal forms in­spired Dalí in some of his works and, in par­tic­u­lar, “The Great Mas­tur­ba­tor”, based on a rock on the is­land of Culleró, lo­cated in front of Cala Culleró, and “The Spec­tre of Sex-Ap­peal”.

One at­trac­tion is Cala Culip cove, shaped like a fjord and fac­ing north, which until the clo­sure of Club Med was out of bounds with­out a vis­i­tor’s pass. Today vis­i­tors can freely reach the small beach that will de­light film fans, it being one of the sites where Luís Buñuel and Dalí shot the sur­real film, “L’Age d’Or”, which caused a scan­dal in Paris when it pre­miered in 1930. The cove also has a long his­tory: used as a nat­ural port since an­cient times, it is one of the main sites for un­der­wa­ter arche­ol­o­gists today.

The re­cov­ery of the land­scape was wel­come news in the local coastal area and Cadaqués. In­for­ma­tion pan­els ex­plain that it is a nat­ural space res­cued from tourist fever and urban spec­u­la­tion. Above all, it pro­vides an ideal spot for those who like wild Mediter­ranean land­scapes shaped by wind and sea salt, and ex­ist­ing some­where be­tween dream and re­al­ity.

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