How to do Catalonia like Salvador Dali

Surrealist inspiration abounds in the artist’s home region, says Paul Tierney

(Getty)

The further north you drive in Catalonia the more beguiling and dramatic it becomes. At Cap de Creus, where gnarly, pockmarked rocks dominate the coastline, rough sea the colour of petrol roars to shore, whipped up by the wild Tramuntana winds. At its southern bay sits Cadaques, the remote painterly town often described as one of Spain’s finest. Painters Picasso, Max Ernst and Marcel Duchamp were all drawn to its modest beauty. And so too was Salvador Dali.

It’s been three decades this year since the man and moustache passed onto Surrealist heaven, but you’re never far from his presence in this beatific slice of Spain. I’m on a pilgrimage of sorts, exploring Dali’s life in the most intimate way possible. Forget gimmicks: out here in the countryside, nature reveals more about the maestro than any book might bluster. Even a cursory glance at the man’s output – from the opening scene of Un Chien Andalou, to ever-present Pyrenean peaks – tells you just how influential this environment was.

On the road to Figueres, Dali’s birthplace, past gilded fields and perfect hay bales, you quickly spot the shapes and motifs that repeatedly feature in his work. The smart market town is bright and lively, but completely overshadowed by its most famous attraction, the audaciously kitsch Dali Theatre-Museum. To sceptics the “egg and bread castle” is a pretentious edifice to vanity, but you’d have to be pretty po-faced not to be enthralled by its pomp and ceremony. Many of the artist’s most pored-over works – The Persistence of Memory, and Prog-rock poster Metamorphosis of Narcissus, are conspicuous by their absence. But what it lacks in subtlety is all for the better.

I meet the Dali Foundation’s director, Montse Aguer, in the Torre Galatea. It’s where the elderly artist, dogged by bad health, lived out his final years. “He wanted to be at the heart of all he created,” she tells me, “and because he was born in Figueres it was like coming full circle.”

Over the next couple of days, I encounter a number of people who claim to have known him, but Ms Aguer is the only one I believe. “I would read him A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking while he lay on the bed over there, and he in turn would recall the landscapes of his youth. To me, Dali was the landscape.”

The Surrealist suite at Hotel Vistabella (Hotel Vistabella)

I feel odd when I wake the next day. At the end of the bed, a large painted screen of Mae West’s Face suddenly splits in two, revealing a view of remarkable, if somewhat distorted, proportions. The Bay of Roses outside is wider than a mile and mill pond calm. At this time of the morning the beaches look almost spectral, something not lost on Dali and many of his most haunting images.

I’m at the Hotel Vistabella in the Surrealist suite. This is less a hotel room, more a bonkers flight of fancy – a vast, disorientating space, replete with melting clocks, sunken bath, and as many golden eggs as the goose could muster. It is both sublime and ridiculous, and all manner of fun could be choreographed within its stark white interior. Over breakfast, the strains of Englebert Humperdinck’s Quando, Quando, Quando float through the room, begging the question: when will the madness end?

The Bay of Roses outside is mill pond quiet (Hotel Vistabella)

Of course, no one in Catalonia should bypass the town of Cadaques, which is every bit as fabulous as you’ve been told. As a child, Dali spent endless summers in its grasp, declaring this Costa Brava jewel “the most beautiful village in the world”. Today it retains an ageless charm, a place of shifting light, natural freedom and a clutch of impressively upscale restaurants. L’Hostal was a favourite of the artist’s but I wager he’d be more impressed by Compartir, a chic outdoor terrace manned by effusive waiters serving delicately artful food. The crack kitchen squad all hail from el Bulli, former best restaurant in the world, so you know plato combinados are off the menu. Gorge instead on “bleeding” mussels and tongue-slicing razor clams.

It’s a 15-minute walk from here to Portlligat, the sleepy bay punctuated by Dali’s famous white villa. The house was a vital sanctuary where he could concentrate and create, but any resemblance to a normal abode ends there. Originally a fisherman’s barraca, the place grew over the years into a grand whitewashed curio with multiple extensions, a place he and enigmatic wife Gala would fill with stuffed animals and obtuse antiques. Dali liked to say he was the first man in Spain to see the sun rise each morning. With a strategically hung mirror in the bedroom, and the fact this is the most easterly point in Spain, who would dare disagree with the great exaggerator?

I head south, inland to Pubol, an ancient, almost narcoleptic village where time stands still and only grasshoppers break the silence. As a token of love, Dali bought and gifted the Castell de Pubol to Gala who had grown tired of increasing public attention. She accepted on one condition – that he visit by written permission only. Well into her eighties, Gala was welcoming lovers into this lair, free to roam its lush gardens, full of stone elephants and strange forced perspective. I’m more taken by the remnants of a past life – the bright orange Datsun in the drive, the classical 8-track cartridge tapes.

Upscale restaurant Compartir serves artful, surreal food (Paul Tierney)

Over in Begur, at the cobalt cove of Cala d’Aiguafreda, a group of Andalucian construction workers are busy frying octopus, getting steadily drunk on cheap red wine. In that inimitable Spanish way, they’re celebrating St Anthony, patron saint of builders. It’s 10.30 in the morning. Overlooking this merry tableaux, shrouded by pine trees, is Sa Rascassa, a chic fish restaurant and button-cute hostel, where excellent host Oscar Gorriz and his wife Merche have spun a little rural fantasy. Dali would surely have approved.

Genius? Dilettante? Or a lobster’s claw of both?

“Si no existiera, habría que inventarlo,” muses Oscar. “If it did not exist, it would have to be invented.”

Travel essentials

Getting there

Ryanair flies to Girona from 13 UK airports; flights from £54 return.

Staying there

The Surrealist Suite at Hotel Vistabella costs from £529, B&B.

Sa Rascassa has double rooms from £152, B&B.

More information

catalunya.com

salvador-dali.org