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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