The bar counter of Bar Boia in Cadaqués could be dismantled forever this July

A year and a half after its forced closure, Bar Boia is still the subject of conversations in Cadaqués. Those who pass by see the number of people taking photos of it, stopping to contemplate the ruin it has become and to comment on the sadness its closure causes. Sadness and also indignation, because "right now it's very ugly for Cadaqués to see it this way," Mari Carme, a resident, tells me. She's not the only one who thinks so. The probably most photographed town in Catalonia, the most seafaring one, cannot have a building that is falling apart. The former owner, the Vehí family, can do nothing because the final legal means to dismantle it is missing: its disqualification as a cultural asset of local interest (BCIL), which the full session of the Consell Comarcal de l'Empordà will almost certainly approve at the end of this month."In December 2024, when we received the letter announcing that we had to close Bar Boia, we proceeded to do everything they indicated," explains Pere Vehí. The last day it was open was January 4th. They didn't have time to do anything special, no closing party, because if they opened one more day after January 4th, they were threatened with a fine of 28,000 euros per day open. The letter they received at the end of December informed the Vehí family that they could not renew the concession because a regulation of the coastal law was coming into effect, according to which there cannot be two bars on an urban beach unless they are separated by one hundred and fifty meters or more. In the case of Marítim and Bar Boia, the distance is seventeen. This meant that Bar Boia could not continue, because it was the first whose concession was expiring, but after Boia, no one else will be able to open in this same location."Two thousand euros to dismantle it

Thus, the day after January 4th, the Vehí family emptied its interior while the indignant voices of Cadaqués and everywhere else rose up. "There were those who cried, telling us it couldn't be that we were closing it." By the end of January, nothing was left inside, only the clean structure, the glass, the walls, the two doors that held the shell. It was a soulless body. "Since March 2025, I have had a dismantling budget, which I have been updating as time has passed," recounts Pere Vehí. The budget to remove the structure amounts to a large sum, because a shear rotary machine is needed; two trailer trucks with a pop and four operators.But despite the budget, Bar Boia could not disappear because it was cataloged as a cultural asset of local interest. For this reason, it has remained there for a year and a half, because it could not be touched if it had this qualification. The novelty is that at the end of this month of May, a plenary session of the Alt Empordà Regional Council will vote on its declassification, and immediately a one-month period will open during which the resolution will be publicly displayed. After this month, we arrive at the beginning of July, the dismantling company, which is Femevi, from Vilamalla, will enter with its trucks to forever remove the structure that had contained so many summer nights, with cocktails from Pere's son, Manel Vehí; so many breakfasts and vermouths overlooking Llarga beach. The Vehí family opened the beach bar in 1946, and it was currently run by Manel Vehí, son of Pere Vehí, who had turned Boia into a gastronomic reference, by day, and a bartender, by night. The sandwiches, the bikinis, and cocktails of all kinds, like the famous Sex on the beach. The tables were always full, especially at night, when everyone was looking out at the sea. If not, there was always the side next to Salvador Dalí's sculpture or those located on the Cadaqués promenade itself. Curiously, that sculpture of Salvador Dalí that the neighbors wanted to be demolished because the artist's outrages caused the farmers not to receive aid for the frosts of a very harsh winter, that of 1956, still stands. Dalí's outburst was: “I have been fortunate enough to be the first person from my town to see olive trees sprout, when no one expected such a thing, after the devastating frosts of last winter.” Because of these statements, the dictator Francisco Franco did not provide the aid that would have greatly helped the farmers, who were then dedicated to olive trees, with which they made one of the oils that is still highly sought after today.This summer, then, Bar Boia, which elevated the cultural and gastronomic life, the gateway to good food and drink in Cadaqués, will disappear forever.