Independent on Sunday, 28 January 2007
My mother had been nervous about my Spanish cycling journey from the start. It was no surprise then, when, a few weeks in, she called me on my mobile phone. "We need a holiday," she said. 'We'll meet you in Barcelona on Sunday." I was thrilled by this excuse to abandon my wearisome two-wheeler, for we were intending to drive up to the coast of northern Catalonia, to those whitewashed fishing villages, pale yellow beaches and bright turquoise coves that had provided lifelong inspiration to one of the most applauded artists of the 20th century: Salvador Dalí.
Dalí was born and raised in the inland town of Figueres where his father worked as a notary. But his family had a second home, on the coast at Cadaques, and it was there that Dalí spent his childhood summers. He loved the village with a feverish intensity and, years later, after his father expelled him from the family home in Figueres in a row about a painting in which Dalí had insulted his deceased mother, he incensed the patriarch further by buying a house in the neighbouring fishing community of Port Lligat.
The house in Port Lligat was a tiny shack but, over the years, the artist developed and redesigned the space until it became a labyrinth of extensions, winding passages and dead ends. His principal home for more than 50 years, it provided an idyllic refuge amid the vivid light, beaches and headlands that so inspired Dalí's work.
The dramatic coastline around Port Lligat and Cadaques can be seen in London later this year: from June the Tate Modern is assembling more than 100 of Dalí's works, including more than 60 paintings, in its exhibition Dalí & Film.
Dalí loved the cinema, and he expressed his cinematic vision through both his paintings and his own films. These included collaborations with Alfred Hitchcock (Dalí created the dream sequence for Spellbound) and Walt Disney, as well as one of the most talked-about movies of the last century, Un chien andalou, which Dalí co-wrote with his friend Luis Buñuel.
Dalí's and Buñuel's second cinematic collaboration, L'âge d'or, was filmed at Cape Creus, just to the north of Cadaques, and locals were employed as extras. The fishermen didn't enjoy fame for long, though. The film was considered so scandalous that, less than two weeks after its opening in Paris, the censors prohibited its screening.
My parents and I hurtled in our hire car towards the wonderland in which Dalí created so much controversy. The wild, stark landscape of the promontory on which both Cadaques and Port Lligat lie was as breathtaking that day as it had been when the painter went there as a child. It was once covered in lush vines but, in the 1880s, the Phylloxera vastatrix lousewrecked the crop. Whole swathes were never replanted; here, only the black stones of the terraces remain and cast harsh, foreboding shadows over the land.
Cadaques, too, had changed little. It was still a tiny, tranquil community whose fishermen hauled in their catch each morning; the restaurants served local hake, monkfish and Catalan wine. We took rooms with sea views at a beachside hotel. "Will the waterfront be noisy at night?" asked my father. (He suffers from a profound aversion to the sound of other people's nightlife.) The receptionist looked aghast. "Not in Cadaques," he said.
In the days that followed we pottered happily around this peaceful Spanish coast that somehow has avoided the scars of mass tourism. We drove the few kilometres to Cape Creus, whose dark rocks have been sculpted into extraordinary shapes by the winds and rains of centuries. Dalí was bewitched by these bizarre formations and they featured in his work.
On another, we made a pilgrimage to Figueres. Dalí opened his Theatre-Museum in his home town in 1974; more than 30 years later it's one of the most visited museums in Spain and its paintings, drawings, sculptures and installations are still displayed exactly as he planned them.
The museum is sensational. This final masterpiece - Dalí insisted that it should be a complete work of surrealist art in itself - was the perfect testament to this artist who had been so talented and so tempestuous, so brilliant and yet so indisputably barmy.
We wandered through the sculpted loaves and suspended wooden chairs; studied the portraits of Gala; explored the famous Face of Mae West Which Can Be Used as an Apartment, and admired the intricate drawings. We tiptoed past Dalí's tomb within which his embalmed body lies, treated to resist decay for 200 years. We gazed at his old Cadillac, which turned heads when he imported it from the US in 1948 and now stands as installation art in the garden.
And then, enchanted and slightly unsettled, we went back to our hire car, a Fiat Punto. Compared with the transportations of Salvador Dalí, it seemed the tiniest bit banal.
HOW TO GET THERE:
Ryanair (0871-246 0000; ryanair.com) offers return flights to Girona from London and several airports around the UK from £30. For accommodation ideas contact the Spanish National Tourist Office (020-7486 8077; tourspain.info).
FURTHER INFORMATION:
Dalí & Film is at Tate Modern, London (020-7887 8888; tate.org.uk) from 1 June-9 September.
1. Cape Creus
This rugged cape, the most easterly point in Spain, is 8km from Dalí's childhood idyll, Cadaques. The sculpted rocks inspired the painter, who called the area a 'grandiose geological delirium'. It inspired other artists, too: the lighthouse featured in the Orson Welles film 'The Light at the Edge of the World'. The cape is now a nature reserve.
2. Cadaques
During his youth, Dalí was visited at his family's holiday home by prominent writers and artists including Federico García Lorca, with whom he had a passionate friendship, Luis Buñuel, and the French poet Paul Eluard. Eluard came to Cadaques in the summer of 1929 with his notoriously promiscuous Russian wife, Gala. Dalí, who had long been sexually anxious, was infatuated. The two began an affair (Dalí's father disinherited him) and were married in 1934.
3. Port Lligat
When Dalí bought his home in this tiny beachside hamlet, it was no more than a fisherman's hut with no running water or electricity. But over the years he enlarged and remodelled it extensively and the surrounding olive trees, green-grey landscapes, rocky bays and turquoise waters became recurrent themes in his work. The house museum is open to visitors. For information go to salvador-dali.org.
4. Monastery of St Pere de Roda
In his 60s, Dalí became friends with the Franco-Oriental transsexual Amanda Lear. Thirty-five years his junior, she was tall, blonde and glamorous. (Gala hated her.) According to Amanda, who is not considered a reliable diarist, she and Dalí made a tortuous journey by donkey to this 10th-century monastery to consult a monk about the possibility of their marrying. Today, the monastery can be reached comfortably by road and there's even a terrace bar.
5. Roses
This historic beach town has now been taken over by sun-worshipping holiday crowds, but still it's a scenic area and some stretches of sand are unspoilt. The cove of L'Almadrava, just outside Roses, was where tuna used to be slain and provided the inspiration for Dalí's painting 'Tuna Fishing'.
6. Empuries
Empuries was one of the most important Greek cities on the Iberian peninsula. The Greeks were followed by the Romans, who arrived in 218BC with the intention of severing Hannibal's supply lines during the Second Punic war. Both colonies have been excavated. Dalí and Lorca frolicked here when the poet visited the painter during Easter 1925.
7. Figueres
If you only have time for one Dalí attraction, it should be the Theatre-Museum in Figueres. It's an enthralling testament to Dalí's life, filled with 1,500 of his works. Dalí dedicated more than 10 years to the creation of his museum. He lived his final years in apartments adjoining the building; after his death, his body was, controversially, buried within the museum's walls.
8. Pubol
In the 1930s, Dalí promised he'd buy Gala a palace. It took him nearly 40 years to do so but, in 1970, Gala finally moved into the castle at Pubol, where she entertained her stream of lovers. Dalí lived at Port Lligat; he moved to the castle after Gala died in 1982. Most of the rooms are as they were during Gala's and Dalí's years.
9. Girona
The city has a striking medieval centre and a history dating back to Roman times. Dalí brought Lorca here in 1925 to see the cathedral's Holy Week ceremonies. In 1958, he married Gala for the second time (the 1934 service had been a civil ceremony) in a church at the nearby village of Sant Martí Vell.
10. Barcelona
As a child, Dalí spent each Christmas in the Catalan capital and was transfixed by Gaudí's magical Park Guell. His uncle, who owned a bookshop on the Ramblas, also influenced Dalí's artistic development. The painter's first solo show, in 1925, was at Barcelona's Dalmau Gallery.
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