Valéncia, Catalunia & the Land of the Surreal

For many months, since we dropped into Spain with all our worldly goods via highway through France last December, we’ve rarely left Andalucía, our chosen home in Spain’s southern region. So, you could say it was time to go back north. Because we’re considering now, a year into our Spain journey, whether or not we ought to stay in Andalucia when we renew our visas.

Our aim for this 6-day trip was to first head to Spain’s east, around Valencia, then north into the Catalunia region. Barcelona’s the capital of Catalunia in the northeastern part of Spain. Where they speak Catalan, a mixture of Spanish and French and local lingo, in addition to Castilian, the default variety of Spanish spoken in Spain. We bypassed Barcelona this time because we were making more of an exploratory trip to parts north. As in: what might it be like if we lived in a smaller place, far north, where the weather isn’t so diabolical in summers?

We decided to make Figueres our home base for 4 days in the north, quite near France, because this is where Salvador Dalí’s parents made, well, Salvador. And where Dalí made his unearthly presence most felt. (We’ve assembled a whole gallery full of photos that we took in Figueres, of Dalí’s environs, legacy and art. Below…)

But first, Castellón

Figueres is at least 10 hours by car from Córdoba. And a bit longer still when you’re traveling with your favorite perrita, Ella.

So we split the route up over two days, stopping for the night on the Costa de Valéncia in the town of Castelló de la Plana. Which also seems to go by the name of Castellón de la Plana. We were confused over this until it came time to write about the place and we did some digging that revealed that Castelló — no N — is preferred, as it is the spelling in the Valencian dialect of Catalan. Catalan, the language spoken in Catalunia, miles away up the coast.

Spain is a stew of languages that’s been cooking for at least a thousand years:

We picked Castelló/Castellón because it was a bit further north than Valéncia, a city we’re saving for a separate trip.

It’s funny how you can’t easily say how big a place is on a zoomed out Google map. Castello de la Plana turned out to be a good bit bigger than the “town” we anticipated, around 180,000 people. We were only there overnight, but we liked what we saw, both by evening and the next morning.

As we left Castelló we intended to head into some back country villages in Catalunia. The trip was meant to explore areas in the north a bit distant from cities. Except, los dos n.º 2, at a gas stop, left his wallet on the gas station’s counter before proceeding to the car and about 100km up the highway before realizing he had no wallet. So, back we went, relieved to pick up a fully intact wallet+cash, before reversing course a second time. Daylight being in finite supply, we skipped the side trip into the hills and proceeded directly to our AirBnB in Figueres.

Donna found a great AirBnb in Figueres, which would be our home for a few days, along with our beloved pooch. Figueres isn’t especially big and we landed at a very nice property in a pretty pedestrian part of town. But it was perfect. An ideal launching pad to the very nice old centro section of Figueres, 15 minutes by foot. And by car to Girona as well as that back country we had meant to see along the way.

Dalí

You would also figure, if you know something about what makes the creatives of Los Dos tick, that what drew us most to Figueres was Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, Marquess of Dalí de Púbol. Better known as just Dalí.

Salvador Dalí was born in Figueres in 1904. He opened a Musuem to himself there in 1974. And died in Figueres in 1989. Although André Breton is considered the founder of surrealism — he authored the Surrealist Manifesto in 1924 — Dalí was surrealism’s most prominent proponent and practitioner. Endlessly inventive and eminently talented as a painter and artist, Dalí took the world on a long, spectacular, circuitous ride on the highways and byways of the surreal.

Los Dos visited two of the marquee sites in Figueres featuring Dalí and his work: the recently-opened Casa Natal or Birthplace of Salvador Dalí and the Dalí Theatre-Museum.

The Birthplace site is indeed in the building where Dalí was born and raised, in a modest second floor apartment, along with his younger sister. The space has been transformed into a phenomenal 21st century immersive tour of Dalí’s life. Windows, as in the above, are screens displaying moving stills (think Ken Burns effect) and video. Narration is delivered via headset throughout the hour-plus tour over 3 floors and many rooms across the building Dalí called home in Figueres.

We visited the Birthplace as walk-ins. Not a problem on a November afternoon. We had reserved tickets for the more popular Theatre-Museum. Donna had been to the latter a couple of times. Los Dos n.º 2 had never been to this part of Spain or any Dalí museums.

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The Theatre-Museum is a double-entendre. It’s housed in the former Municipal Theater of Figueres, a building dating to 1850 that was burned out and abandoned during the Spanish Civil War.

I do not think that a museum is a storehouse or a cemetery, in which the great works of art are there only to satisfy the curiosity of the Sunday strollers. On the contrary, a museum is a living organism that grows and breathes and acts; a living organism that can die, too, if its vital purpose is not fulfilled.
. . .
I want my Museum to be like a single unit, a maze, a great surrealistic object. It will be an absolutely theatrical museum. People who come to see it will emerge with a feeling of having had a theatrical dream.

Salvador Dalí

In 1961, the City agreed to create a museum in the former theater. Dalí was involved throughout the design and construction. Call it a theater of the surreal, with multiple installations created for the space by Dalí. The museum-theater is considered Dalí’s last great work of art. It opened in 1974 and Dalí continued to add pieces through 1984. He passed away in 1989 after 85 long, crazy, surreal years on planet Dalí.

There’s a great rundown of how the museum came to be at the Dalí Foundation web site.

So, enough gabbing; let’s see some photos of both venues, the Birthplace and Museum-Theatre of Salvador Dalí.

If you want to take a walk through the Dalí Museum via a 360-degree virtual tour, check out this super cool treatment: https://my.matterport.com/show/?m=K5MKrKcfyRW.

The Dalí trek was the center of our activities over 5 days or so. But we did see a part of Spain — Catalunia — that Donna had visited before, but not by way of a free-ranging tour by car. I had only been to this part of Spain back in 2024 when we were making our mad dash from Frankfurt to Córdoba by big-ass van.

Girona

About an hour south of Figueres, we visited Girona for an afternoon. It’s twice the size of Figueres, with a bit more than 100,000 residents. A beautiful city where we could definitely spend a lot more time, Girona is a place we thought we might take ourselves to live in future. Away from our beloved Córdoba, but far from the insane summer heat of Andaluc;ía.

Here’s a few shots of Girona and its magnificent cathedral. And, for you Game of Thrones fans out there, you’ll be interested to learn that the show used several sites in Girona as backdrops or locations (remember Braavos? Much of it is Girona). There seems to be a thriving industry online of outfits who will take you on tours of places like Girona so you can walk in the footsteps of the Stark, Lannister, or Targaryen clans.

And France?

A beautiful part of living in Europe is just how close things are, in comparison with the breadth of distance we were accustomed to in North America. On any given day, we could get in the car in Córdoba and arrive in France nine hours later. And from there, Switzerland is another ten hours. And then a bit over three hours, you’d be in Germany. Crazy.

We didn’t do a day-run to France, but we ambled up from Figueres to Perpignan in a teence under an hour. Just because. We had a nice lunch at the L’estudiantine cafe, drove around town a bit, then headed back home to Spain.

We headed south again, back to Valencia. Since we hadn’t detoured to the villages we’d meant to see, we routed through Castelvi de la Marca and then Perafort. The former turned out to be smaller than the speck on Google Maps we’d tapped to get directions. A cluster of old stone buildings with vineyards in all directions.

Perafort was a bit larger. A dozen kilomoters from coastal Terragona, it even had some cross-streets. A couple of true “villages,” they left us feeling like village life might be a little too little for Los Dos. Better to look for actual towns, or satellite locations outside an actual city.

After a day’s drive south we stopped outside Valencia and stayed the night at another B&B Hotel. It’s a hotel chain we first encountered on our journey into Spain last year. On our overland trek to Córdoba last year we’d booked a “pet-friendly” place in Albacete, a few hours north of Córdoba. But the hotel turned out to be unremittingly cat-unfriendly. So we ended up at the B&B Hotel there. Affordable, modern, spare-design, and excellent service. We’ve been taking Ella with us to B&B hotels in Spain ever since.

From Valencia it’s a final six-hour drive home. Back in Córdoba we took the hand-off from our cariña pet-sitter, Lourdes, and reunited with the kitties.

Happy ending

Los Dos will be back with more to share about our adventures in Spain. And lots more pix, as ever. We hope you’ll come back. You’ll find us on the Los Dos Blog, although we’ve decided to scale back our presence on social media for now.

Thanks for stopping by! And Saludos from Los Dos!