Interesting places

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What’s the first thing you instinctively do when you encounter something unusual in nature while exploring? As a true citizen of the 21st century, you reach out for your smartphone or camera to capture the exciting discovery. But that’s today. What did people do in earlier times, when no cameras, phones or computers existed, but wondrous caves, awesome cliffs, striking waterfalls have already been found in abundance?

One way to capture the nature’s beauty is to tell legends about it.

At the very edge of the cape Punta del Molí in Palamós lies a stone called Pedra del Gegant, and a few meters away, the rock Sa Galera peeks out from the foamy waters. Both the stone and the rock haven’t been named so by accident — a long time ago, when Palamós was still a modest Roman colony and not a bustling summer resort, they played title roles in one very sad story.

There lived in the environs of Palamós a young guy, fabulously tall and strong, wealthy and pretty handsome, but with one serious fault — he was so sullen and glum that he was considered unsociable and shunned. Once, he was out hunting when he encountered the daughter of a local squire, a girl of rare beauty, and fell in love with her deeply. Despite his gloomy reputation, he managed to capture her heart and have his feelings answered in kind.

Young lovers met in secret to avoid gossip, but hiding the truth for long was impossible in the village. Once they were seen together on the Castell beach, and the news of the choice of his daughter reached the squire’s ears almost immediately. “No person, no problem” — he figured and assembled a galley to take the girl away to the safe and far-away Empúries.

The young man found out about the plan too late; when he came running to the cape, the galley has already departed. Not able to resign himself to the loss of his beloved, he started throwing large rocks at the boat. After the first few failed tries, one landed right on the skipper, killing him instantly. Having been left without its helmsman, the boat went adrift, collided with a coastal reef and began to sink. The giant ran up to the shore preparing to jump and save his love, but when he lept into the air his feet slipped and he fell into the water, not jumping even a meter into the sea.

Neither the giant young man nor the boat with its crew drowned, despite these unfortunate circumstances, but magically turned into stone, so even today we can stand witness to (and photograph) their dramatic showdown.

The beautiful residence on top of the Cap Sa Sal cape in Begur is a former hotel, for the longest time one of the leading competitors of Hostal La Gavina in S’Agaro to host celebrities visiting the Costa Brava coast. The hotel was opened on July 4, 1963, after a prolonged construction period that lasted eight years, and closed down at the end of the 1970s when it became clear that its average annual revenue was too low to maintain the luxurious presentation of the premises.

Today, the building has multiple owners that rent out their expensive apartments either directly or with the help of management companies. The facade of the building doesn’t betray this fact and eagerly attracts the gaze of onlookers observing the coast from the Begur township of Sa Tuna.

Phone number: 640 688 966