FROM CAMBRILS TO CALAFELL

THE SUN IS PLENTIFUL. THE CLIMATE HERE IS WHAT THEY CALL MILD AND MEDITERRANEAN, LIKE THE LANDSCAPE: LONG, WIDE BEACHES FRAMED BY FANTASTIC ROCK-FACES, WITH PINEWOODS, BAMBOOS, DUNES AND MARSHES.

JOSEP BARGALLÓVALLS AUTHOR TRAVEL

ain is scarce here. In fact, this new one, work is temporarily held up by And, faster than we would have liked, the stretch of coast -some thirty some archaeological find -large or coastal townsgrew, builton hillssetbackfrom Okilometres south-west of Tarrago- small, it makes no difference. The city's im- the sea; especially the parts closest to the na and another thirty to the north-west- perial past has left other remains scattered sea, built more recently, when the African has always suffered from lack of water. over the whole area. We come across pirates no longer posed a threat. These Neither is it too windy, though when the them along the length of the coast, follow- towns changed considerably, without, how; mestral blows -supposedly responsible ing the Via Augusta: the Arc de BerO; ever, abandoning their way of lii. for a particular character that tends to- beside the present-day main road; the Starting from the bottom, Cambrils is still, wards imaginative genius and stubbom Morc villa, in Torredembarra; the Munts and possibly more than ever, a port in individuality- it does so with a venge- villa, in Altafulla, the Medol needle, in which one can eat very well, as Francesc ance. But the sun is plentiful. The climate Tamarit and the torre deis Escipions, at the Eiximenis, a monk and writer on local to- here is what they cal1 mild and Mediter- gates of the city. pics, commented in the fourteenth century. ranean, like the landscape: long, wide In time, the Romans had to leave in a bit Salou, a cosmopolitan town in summer beaches framed by fantastic rock-faces, of a huny. Others came, the country was and a centre of weekend nightlife, still with pinewoods, bamboos, dunes and resettled and went through wars, vidories remembers that Wednesday morning at marshes. They say it does you good. and defeats -more defeats than victo- the beginning of the thirteenth century, The Roman legions, the imperial officials ries- ioys and sorrows. Then, towards the when Jaume 1, with the wind behind him, and the high priests of the official religion fifties and sixties of this century, ths latest set sail to conquer the island of Majorca. were the first outsiders to settle here. They avalanche of visitors arrived: people who Tamarit, small and sheltered, remembers came down the Via Augusta from the came to spend their holidays here. Ger- the painters Ramon Casas and Miquel north and stopped here to build the capi- mans, English, Belgians, Scandinavians, Utrillo, with one foot in Paris and the other tal of Tarraconensis, one of their vast French, Dutch, Italians..., at the head of in Barcelona, who rediscovered the town provinces. As you take a walk round which, at least, in the locals' hazy memo- at the beginning of this century. The noble, Tarragona, the ancient city reveals ries, were the mythical Swedish blondes, historic streets of Altafulla, with their endless evidence of the Roman presence: symbol af a permissiveness which was for- medieval flavour, still echo with tales of the city walls, the necropolis, the circus bidden in that dark age. The age of those witches and wizards. As in Torredembar- -now being restored-, the forum, the first midnight swims, with no more than a ra, stories of the "lndians" also flourish: praetorium and al1 sorts of smaller re- towel awaiting the retum of a damp body, those peasants, fishermen, shopkeepers mains to be found scattered round the of damp bodies, and of morality in uni- and sailors who went to America to seek city. Apparently, the construction of an form, an oddly shaped hat and a long their fortvne, came back wealthy, and underground in Tarragona would be as cape, ostensibly on the lookout for night- ended up as patrons of the arts, giving difficult as in Rome itself. In fact, every time smugglers, also mythical, and iust as their name to many world-famous works, time someone digs up a street -to replant real, historically, as those Swedes -orthe as in the case of the Güells and the archi- the trees or lay new gas mains- oran old German, English or Dutch blondes...- the tect Antoni Gaudi. Or the beaches of El building is demolished to make way for a age of the first bikinis. Vendrell -Sant Salvador and Coma-ru- ga- with the tranquility of the house ly- admire young people of not always that al1 who pass leave their footprints. where Pau Casals, the most universal of recognizable sex; ghostlike before the With time enough to live the sands, the the town's sons, lived right at the water's .ter, stands the old sanatorium, beaten deep, inviting sea, with its rocky bed, the edge: a recommended visit on a misty but proud. surviving dunes, with their closely guarded day, when the summer visitors have aban- From the Romans to the Swedes, from secrets. With the spirit awake enough to doned the seashore and, from the mas- Cambrils to Calafell, snatches of beaches agree that, seen from the sea, that part of ter's cello, one still seems to hear the so*, and cliffs from one little part of our coun- Tarragona nearest the port, in spite of the far-away music of the Cant dels Ocells. try. Of men and women who still hang on industrial chaos -the petrochemical And at the end of our iourney, as the to their own traditions, their own particu- disaster-, looks rather like Marseilles. road climbs up towards the north, the lar way of speaking and their charader- In fact, the sea is the Mediterranean. From Calafell of the novels of Carlos Barral, istic mouth-watering cuisine. A stretch of out to sea, al1 coasts look alike. Like these Juan Marsé and Gabriel García Már- coast to be enioyed, without any rush, seagulls that seem to sip its waters, at the quez, full of bars, from which local intel- with the tranquility of one who knows the edge of the beach or greedily following leduals -with the approval of the old rain will come sooner or later, that after the nets of the litile fishing boats. As you fishermen and not particularly discreet- the mestral the fine weather will return, know, rain is scarce here. a