A year and a half after its forced closure, the Bar Boia is still a talking point in Cadaqués. Those who pass by see the number of people taking photos, stopping to contemplate the wreck it has become and to comment on the sadness of seeing it closed. Sadness and also indignation, because "right now it is very ugly for Cadaqués to see it like this," Mari Carme, a resident, tells me. She is not the only one who thinks so. The most photographed town in Catalonia, the most seafaring, cannot have a building that is falling to pieces. The former owner, the Vehí family, can do nothing because the last legal recourse to dismantle it is missing: the declassification as a cultural asset of local interest (BCIL), which will surely be approved by the full session of the Council of the Empordà at the end of this month."In December 2024, when we received the letter announcing that we had to close the 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 coastal law regulation was coming into effect, according to which on an urban beach there cannot be two bars if they are not 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 to have its concession expire, but after Boia, no one else will be able to open in this same location."Thousands of euros to dismantle it

Thus, the day after January 4, the Vehí emptied its interior while the indignant voices of Cadaqués and everywhere were raised. "There were those who cried, who told us that it couldn't be that we were closing it." By the end of January, there was nothing 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 gone by," recounts Pere Vehí. The budget to remove the structure amounts to a large sum, because a shear rotator machine; two trailer trucks with pop and four operators are needed.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 afterwards a period of one month will be opened in which the resolution will be exposed to the public. After this month, we find ourselves at the beginning of July, the dismantling company, which is Femevi, from Vilamalla, will enter there with its trucks to eliminate forever more the structure that had contained so many summer nights, with cocktails from Pere's son, Manel Vehí; so many breakfasts and vermouths looking at Playa Llarga. The Vehí family opened the beach bar in 1946, and it was currently run by Manel Vehí, Pere Vehí's son, who had turned Boia into a gastronomic reference, by day, and a mixologist, by night. The sandwiches, the bikinis and all kinds of cocktails, like the famous Sex on the beach. The tables were always full, especially at night, when everyone was looking to watch the sea. Otherwise, there was always the side that touched Salvador Dalí's sculpture or those located on the Cadaqués promenade itself. Curiously, that sculpture by Salvador Dalí that the neighbors wanted to be demolished because the artist provoked with his blunders that the peasants did not receive aid for the frosts of a very harsh winter, that of 1956, still stands. Dalí's blunder was: “I have been fortunate enough to be the first person in my village to see the olive trees sprout, when no one expected such a thing, after the devastating frosts of the past winter.” Because of these phrases, the dictator Francisco Franco did not give the aid that would have greatly helped the peasants, who were then dedicated to the 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 more.

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The tramontana wind, bitterly cold this mid-November Monday, howls furiously through the narrow, steep streets of Cadaqués, deserted today, with closed doors and windows and drawn shutters on bars and restaurants, all displaying signs announcing extended holidays. Quietude, tranquility, and the only sound, the onslaught of the tramontana. This is the Cadaqués that the Japanese painter Shigeyoshi Koyama loves, the Cadaqués he so desperately misses during the summer, when the revelry and noise take over the town day and night, forcing him into exile in the quiet village of Vilanova de la Muga until September, when the summer visitors leave and Cadaqués returns.

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Construction of the new Martín Faixó winery (DO Empordà) on the Sa Perafita hill in Cap Creus will begin next year, in 2026, after a twenty-year struggle to obtain permits. This is how Rafa Martín explains it: son of the beloved Anna Mota, theAnita from Cadaqués, who died last June, and father of winemaker Ester and Rafel Martín Faixó. At the top of the Sa Perafita hill, located a few kilometers before reaching the town of Cadaqués, the family has a farmhouse, converted into a hotel and also a winery. There, in the offices, Rafa and his daughter Ester show the approved plans, which they will finally be able to translate from paper to land. "The road we've traveled hasn't been easy, but we can finally start building it here, right in front of us, where we are right now," says Rafa Martín one bright sunny morning.

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Cadaqués is a land of artists. The list of great creators fascinated by the bohemian atmosphere and idyllic setting of this town at the foot of Cap de Creus is very long, from the 19th century to the present day. Shigeyoshi Koyama, Marc Aleu, and Richard Hamilton are three of the most important, and this summer, for the first time in history, the Alto Empordà municipality has dedicated a joint exhibition to them at the Cadaqués Gallery, which can be visited until August 24.

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Cadaqués's two trendy bars have monosyllabic names, are located next to each other, serve Catalan cuisine, have a good Empordà wine list and a good drinks list, and have one special feature: the owners of each bar know each other, get along, and have managed to keep all their guests' tables full. They are called La Sal (pl. des Portitxó, s/n), by the cocktail bartender Manel Vehí and Josep Alà, and El Set (pl. des Portitxó, 8), by the Cadaqués native Joan Rodés.

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It's Wednesday, the Virgin of Carmen, and in Cadaqués everything is ready for the afternoon procession of the boats; there will also be mass and a sardine feast. And if there's a festival in Cadaqués, there's no shortage of corks. In fact, they're never missing any day of the year, but it's in the summer when Mercè Cabrisas, from the Can Cabrisas bakery, sells 4,000 a day. If you go mid-afternoon to buy them and haven't ordered them, you probably won't be able to try them. "But this happens as it happens, because yesterday, for example, there were some left," she says. Each one costs 0.90 euros, and in addition to selling them in bulk, it's also traditional to buy them in boxes of 15 (13 euros) and 30 (26 euros). The boxes have the unique profile of the Alt Empordà town drawn on them, and this very wrapping is also what has made the corks popular, identified with the town.

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The white church of Santa María in Cadaqués was packed to the rafters. Yesterday, Tuesday, the townspeople said goodbye to Ana Mota Cortés, who died Monday morning as a result of a urinary tract infection, just three days shy of her ninetieth birthday. Her children remember that Anita arrived in Cadaqués as a teenager with twenty duros in her pocket. "She worked hard so that her children would prosper, so that we would work, so that we would follow a good example, and today I have to say that none of the four children even smoke," says the eldest son, Rafa Martín, who adds that his mother came to Cadaqués to be near her boyfriend, Guillermo Martín, whom she married when she was eighteen.

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There are days when you go out on your bike and everything flows. You leave Rustik, the cycling café and bakery in Bellcaire d'Empordà, head towards the sea, head out along dusty trails, swim in a hidden cove, suffer climbing a lonely hill, and end up crossing wetlands in silence. This route is exactly that: a long, intense, and wild adventure through the most authentic Empordà.

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Cadaqués, with its idyllic village charm of whitewashed houses at the foot of Cap de Creus and the birthplace of Salvador Dalí, is one of the most attractive and popular spots for sun and beach tourism on the Costa Brava. In winter, the town is home to around 2,800 people, but in summer, the population increases exponentially to nearly 30,000, multiplying its usual population by ten. During the tourist season, long lines form on the only winding road leading to the town from Roses, and parking is almost impossible to find.

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