We spent the past 2 articles exploring Barcelona, but now we’re getting out of the city, driving northeast up the Mediterranean coast, toward the French border. This was the first time I’d been anywhere in Catalunya other than Barcelona, so I was interested for what lay ahead. And I immediately found myself chuckling to see that, as we drove up the coast from Barcelona, we passed through another city en route (or maybe it’s more of a commuter suburb of Barcelona) which is called Badalona.
BADalona? Like, what is this… Barcelona’s evil twin? 😂
Jokes aside, I did not enter this stretch of the trip thinking I would write an article on it at all. I was coming up here for a wedding (congrats to Laura & Etienne!) and I expected that I would be too busy to do much exploring. And it was a beautiful setting, so I wasn’t feeling very ambitious on the matter either. I would have happily hung around the hotel and venue all day long…
…but fate had other plans. As it turned out, I had the better part of a day to explore, and a 2nd musketeer to accompany me on my quest! So this actually turned out to be a very cool and fully unexpected mini-adventure. So let me show you the setting on Google Maps here; we’ll be in a little town called Caldes d’Estrac.
So it was agreed that there would be a journey! All we needed now was a destination…
As chance would have it, on a quick errand into town, we’d spotted an old brick tower protruding through the trees off in the distance. We were standing on a ridge when we spotted it on the ridge opposite us. The densest part of town lay in the valley between these two ridges. This tower, we decided, was the destination for our quest. BEHOLD!
Honestly, if we never found our way up to this tower, that would be fine. But it gave us something to orient ourselves toward. The journey is what counts, right?
Well, the journey did not disappoint! There are both highways and railways that hug this stretch of the Catalunya coastline, just north of Barcelona, so—seeing it all whizz by out of our car window—it didn’t seem likely that it would be possible to escape the noise of the all these cars, trucks, and trains zooming by 24/7. Clearly all these little towns long predated the rise of mass transit, but what of them would remain after these massive infrastructure projects had plowed through the middle of them? In my initial fly-over, I was guessing that the answer was “not much”, but I was very wrong. In fact, that’s where this little town—Caldes d'Estrac—really surprised me. As we set off on foot, all that noise felt far, far away.
As we navigated the narrow, overgrown streets that wound their way down to the center of town, between the private gardens, Catalan independence flags, and the occasional cat, we caught interesting little glances into the lives and homes of the people that live here. The town’s main road, La Riera, was quite lovely! Even in such a small town, there was decent street life, with cafes, restaurants, shops, and even a marketplace where fresh food was sold by local vendors; everything from fresh produce to live lobsters. We ordered iced coffees, and received espressos with large ice cubes on the side. We sat down outside near a group of Spanish workers drinking San Miguel Lager to enjoy the ambience.
From here, it was time to start feeling our way up the next ridge to the mysterious tower that we’d seen earlier in the day. From the center of town, this tower was no longer immediately visible, but we had a few ideas on how to find it. Of course we’d consulted Google Maps, but there was actually no road that led to our destination. In fact, it wasn’t even 100% clear to us where this tower was on Google Maps. (I’ve located it since then, but at the time it was unclear, and my cell service was shoddy). There were a couple of failed attempts early in our journey wherein we walked down a road that we’d expected would lead us very close to our destination, only to find that it was actually separated from this tower by a giant stone cliff. This is the problem with 2-dimensional maps! It was frustrating but fun, and led us to some beautiful vistas overlooking the town along the way. Here are some photos of our slow, winding, inefficient ascent…
OK, pause - have you ever heard of the film, Spirited Away from Hayao Miyazaki & Studio Ghibli?
If not, here’s the Spirited Away trailer. I LOVE this film! But even if you don’t watch the film, watch the trailer. The rest of this article will make more sense if you’ve seen it.
I’m going to share the premise of the movie; I don’t think this is a spoiler, but if you’d rather watch it yourself, you can scroll beyond the “Subscribe to This Blog” box and pick up from there.
The movie opens with a little girl and her parents driving in a car. They get lost and come to a mysterious stone tunnel in the woods. Curious, they decide to park the car and set out on foot to see what’s on the other side of the tunnel. Their daughter is frightened and insists that they turn back, but the parents don’t listen. On the other side of the tunnel, they come to a beautiful field, and quickly come across a traditional-feeling town. At first it seems abandoned, but then they happen upon restaurants that are filled with food. The parents suspect that they have stumbled into a theme park of some sort, so they begin to eat the food, expecting that a server will appear to collect payment for the meal… all the while the little girl is begging her parents to leave, because something feels off to her.
What’s actually happening is that—when they went through that tunnel—they had somehow passed from their normal world into a spirit world. Initially, it presents as being surreally similar to the ‘normal world’ they are used to, except that it is weirdly vacant (hence the weirdly empty town). But then, it turns out, they can’t get back out of this spirit world they have entered. And the really wild ride begins from there.
ANYWAY, back to our story.
We eventually found the spot where the road ends, giving way to a wooded area. Up a forested hill, we could see the top of this mysterious tower poking out above the treetops. There was a visiting Spanish couple out for a walk seemed to be on the same adventure we were, but when we were greeted by a series of fences they eventually turned back. It was a bit strange because this was clearly a functional public area at one point… but it seemed to have fallen into disrepair. We even found an abandoned log cabin in the forest out here. It had a magical view looking down at Caldes d'Estrac and the Catalunyan coastline, but somehow was already completely isolated from all of that. We continued our way upward.
Eventually we came to a fence blocking our way. But there was no sign, no people, no sign of danger of any sort… so, with a cheeky shrug, we hopped the fence and continued our path upward. At this point the ambient noise of the town, the highway, and the railway had all faded away, replaced by the gentle but constant roar of the Mediterranean wind. It was a bit surreal. This is the point in the story where I started to actively compare our little adventure to Spirited Away. It felt very similar! We’d also ventured into a place we perhaps should not have been, to unexpectedly find ourselves in (seemingly) total isolation. It was very odd. But the rich plant life coupled with the panoramic Mediterranean views felt like something straight out of Studio Ghibli.
The anime grass blew around us as we made our way to the top of the hill… and there it was: our tower. I was not at all convinced that we’d make it here when we began our little journey, but here it was, sitting quietly and anonymously on this gorgeous hillside. I’d imagined that it would be on somebody’s sightseeing itinerary, but we were completely alone up here. There was a wider brick structure at the base of this old tower with a bright red door leading in. The structure itself looked like it was extremely old, but the door looked like it had a fresh coat of paint on it. We checked; the door was locked. But the little path leading toward said door had string lights hanging overhead like some sort of abandoned wedding venue. The similarities with Spirited Away were continuing to build. I joked that when we got back down to town there would be nobody there; the sky would turn some weird, dark shade of purple and there would be spirits walking through the streets.
To make things weirder, at the place where the hill began to slope downward toward the sea, there was some sort of abandoned bunker built into the hillside. We walked up to the entrance, which was in complete disrepair. The gate was also locked but the windows were just a set of metal bars so we could see some of what was inside: an empty concrete space littered with debris.
Both this tower and this bunker had a magical view of the Mediterranean; in fact, it was such a clear day that we could see the beginnings of Barcelona way off in the distance. It was very surreal.
After the fact, I did some research to track down some solid info on this tower. Our cell service wasn’t great out here, so I knew absolutely nothing about it when I was actually there.
Get this… the tower is called Torre dels Encantats, or “Tower of the Enchanted”.
I was already feeling quite affirmed in my Miyazaki comparisons, but, wait; it gets better.
Technically sitting just over the municipal boundary of Caldes d'Estrac in a place called Arenys de Mar, this tower is actually extremely old. The core of the structure is medieval, probably originating around the 11th–13th centuries. It was subsequently modified and fortified with its circular defensive wall in the 16th century. At this point, it functioned as a coastal watchtower, as towns like this had become the target of periodic raids by Mediterranean corsairs.
But… why the name?? The “dels Encantats” part actually comes from some interesting local folklore! One legend associates the tower with a “Princess Fàtima”, who was supposedly brought to Caldes to be cured by its thermal waters. Another says a mysterious dona d'aigua ("water woman") lived in the tower and descended to the sea to bathe by moonlight.
I MEAN COME ON. THIS IS STRAIGHT OUT OF A MIYAZAKI FILM.
This was such an unexpected and cool find. I had to write about it.
This was the final installment in our 3-part mini-series on Catalunya, but I’m sure I’ll be back in Spain very soon. In the meantime, I’ve got a really interesting queue of articles coming up. Stay tuned & don’t forget to subscribe if you don’t already!
There are few cities on earth—certainly none more notable than Barcelona—whose architectural identities have been shaped so profoundly by just 1 person. Sure, other famous architects have left their mark on some of the other great cities of the world over the years, but none that I can think of whose work has so strongly and completely defined the identity of a single city as Antoni Gaudí for Barcelona. You may never have even heard of Gaudí, but if you know anything about Barcelona, chances are good that when you picture this city, you are picturing something that originated in this guy’s imagination.