A detour into living history
Just a quarter mile from the busy road to Cadaques and other coastal resorts lies an old town called Castello d'Empulles. It did not appear in any guidebook I have seen, and I ended up there by mistake, while trying to find a way to reverse direction on the highway. However a short drive among the town's narrow streets convinced me that it would not be a bad place to spend the night before returning to Barcelona the next morning.
I stayed at a hostal called Ca L'Anton, and got engaged in conversation with the friendly and talkative Anton himself. He was quite a charming old man, who has relatives in the US and excitedly told me about using instant messaging on his computer to communicate with them. When I expressed an interest in the area's history, which goes back to the time of Charlemagne, Anton introduced me to another old man who was sitting in a corner by himself.
It turned out that the man's name was Mark Fages, son of a poet named Fages de Clement, who was a friend of Salvador Dali. Mark showed me a poster hanging above the bar, on which Dali illustrated each verse of one of his father's poems. Apparently Dali did many of these illustrations, and Mark confided that he had several original Dali paintings hanging at his house. Mark himself was a former lawyer and large landowner in these parts, and at one point in the conversation we delved pretty deeply into the intricacies of Catalan real estate law.
Our conversation went on for over an hour, with Mark telling stories of various ancestors, pausing only to confirm that I completely understood the family relationship to one or another personnage. If I recall right, his great-grandfather owned the largest shipping company between Barcelona and Cuba, with 27 ships. Another one of his ancestors allegedly founded the city of Los Angeles. That Fages supposedly has a statue somewhere in LA, but Mark forgot to specify where. When I have some time I will definitely research that one. When we parted Mark gave me his address and said to write him when I return to Barcelona.
Strolling through the town that same night, I saw quite a few more old people, which surprised me given that it was well past midnight on Sunday night. However, I apparently had just missed the Catalan ritual Sardana dance in which people of the town dance in a circle in the town square. Still, seeing all the nightlife, including several open restaurants was quite an interesting contrast to the sleepy French towns of the previous day.
I stayed at a hostal called Ca L'Anton, and got engaged in conversation with the friendly and talkative Anton himself. He was quite a charming old man, who has relatives in the US and excitedly told me about using instant messaging on his computer to communicate with them. When I expressed an interest in the area's history, which goes back to the time of Charlemagne, Anton introduced me to another old man who was sitting in a corner by himself.
It turned out that the man's name was Mark Fages, son of a poet named Fages de Clement, who was a friend of Salvador Dali. Mark showed me a poster hanging above the bar, on which Dali illustrated each verse of one of his father's poems. Apparently Dali did many of these illustrations, and Mark confided that he had several original Dali paintings hanging at his house. Mark himself was a former lawyer and large landowner in these parts, and at one point in the conversation we delved pretty deeply into the intricacies of Catalan real estate law.
Our conversation went on for over an hour, with Mark telling stories of various ancestors, pausing only to confirm that I completely understood the family relationship to one or another personnage. If I recall right, his great-grandfather owned the largest shipping company between Barcelona and Cuba, with 27 ships. Another one of his ancestors allegedly founded the city of Los Angeles. That Fages supposedly has a statue somewhere in LA, but Mark forgot to specify where. When I have some time I will definitely research that one. When we parted Mark gave me his address and said to write him when I return to Barcelona.
Strolling through the town that same night, I saw quite a few more old people, which surprised me given that it was well past midnight on Sunday night. However, I apparently had just missed the Catalan ritual Sardana dance in which people of the town dance in a circle in the town square. Still, seeing all the nightlife, including several open restaurants was quite an interesting contrast to the sleepy French towns of the previous day.
posted by Dmitri Evseev at 2:51 PM
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