Palamós is a fishing town located in the central section of the Costa Brava, with a permanent population of approximately 18,000 people. It is neither the capital of its comarca, El Baix Empordà (that’d be La Bisbal d’Empordà), nor the largest town (either Sant Feliu de Guíxols or Palafrugell, depending on who you ask), but it is one of the most important.
As well as being home to one of the biggest fishing fleets of La Costa Brava (you’ll have heard of Gambas de Palamós, right?), Palamós is also where the county hospital for El Baix Empordà is situated. In the past, it was a significant producer of cork stoppers for champagne, cava, and wine bottles; however, since the 1960s, tourism has become one of the main industries in the town.
But how did it all begin?
The area that is today the Municipality of Palamós has been inhabited by humans for at least 5,500 years and almost certainly even longer. There are numerous dolmens in the hills surrounding the town, and the remains of a 6th-century BCE Iron Age settlement of the Iberian Indikete tribe can still be seen today on a hill overlooking Platja Castell. Other similar settlements are dotted around the region.
A short distance away at La Fosca beach, the medieval ruins of the Castle of Sant Esteve de Mar that we see today were built on top of the remains of an earlier Roman villa. It is believed that the villa may have been built on top of another Iberian settlement that existed long before, although excavations have not yet taken place to confirm this. The principal Indikete town of that time was located next to where the medieval village of Ullastret is today, and its interaction with the Greek trading post at Empuries, next to L’Escala, was instrumental in the development of the local Iberian culture.
Later, in the 3rd century BCE, the Romans arrived in the region at the start of their Second Punic War with Carthage, and following their victory in that war, the Romanisation of the entire Iberian Peninsula began. The Indiketes coexisted with Greeks and Romans for quite some time, but Iberian culture was gradually subsumed into the Roman way of life, and their language also disappeared. When the Western Roman Empire eventually collapsed, the Visigoths occupied these lands. However, as much of the history of that period went unrecorded, not as much is known about the region’s events until medieval times.
Palamós is Born
Hitting the fast-forward button a little, we come to the year 1277 when King Pere el Gran of Aragón & Catalunya (Peter the Great) purchased the aforementioned Castell de St Esteve de Mar in La Fosca as he wished to build a port to allow for increasing trade, especially with Sicily, of which his wife Constance was a princess and of which he had also become king by conquest, wresting it from French control. An existing Royal Port on the River Ter to the north (near today’s town of L’Estartit) had become silted up, and the deep natural harbour of what was to become Palamós was the logical choice as its replacement.
On 3 December 1279 (to be exact!) the town of Palamors (as it was known for the first century or so of its existence) was officially founded to protect the new port, with a charter, or carta magna, declaring that its new settlers were to be permitted to build new homes and live free from any servitude. The charter also bestowed certain benefits, including a weekly market that takes place every Tuesday, which it still does to this very day. That’s almost 750 years of Tuesdays! So next time you’re tempted to grumble about Avinguda de Catalunya being closed to traffic for the market, remember, the market has been around a lot longer than the traffic!
The French Come and Go
In 1282, King Charles of Sicily was excommunicated by Pope Martin IV (who was French), and his Kingdom of Sicily was confiscated and returned to the French crown. This triggered hostilities between France and the Crown of Aragon (which included Catalunya), and, with Palamors still only a few years into its existence, it was taken by King Philippe of France in 1285 to support his siege of Girona. It wasn’t “taken” for very long, though, as a French fleet was defeated in a couple of naval engagements that took place over three days that came to be known as the Battle of the Illes Formigues (Ant Islands).
The name of the victorious Admiral Roger de Llúria still lives on in street names throughout Catalunya, including in the fishermen’s quarter in El Pedró in Palamós, which seems appropriate, being seafaring folk all. Due to this naval defeat, as well as setbacks in their land campaign, the French were forced to withdraw from Catalunya. At least for a while…
The First “Religious War”
Although permission had been granted in 1334 for a church dedicated to Santa Maria to be built, strong opposition from parishioners of the Church of Santa Eugènia de Vila-romà, which had existed since 1319 in St. Joan de Palamós (although the parish was founded at least as far back as 1163 and a primitive oratory is recorded as having lived on the site in 1191). This opposition meant that only a small chapel to Santa Maria was erected instead, and even that wasn’t until 1371.
Eventually Sta. Maria de Palamós was separated from Sta. Eugènia was to become its own parish, and construction of the church proper began in 1439, with a second phase commencing in 1521. The building was severely damaged in a pirate attack in 1543 (more about which will be discussed later) and was subsequently renovated during the latter half of the 16th century.
It had to be repaired again after an attack by English ships in 1742, and once again suffered considerable damage during the Spanish Civil War (1936-39), which was not repaired until 1942. Despite all its trials and tribulations, it has survived to be the oldest building in the old town of Palamó,s still standing today as the original church in St. Joan de Palamós was completely rebuilt in 1765.
The Pirate Menace
The original pier was built in the port in the mid-1400s, and Palamós was the second most important port of Catalunya through the 15th and 16th centuries. Most Catalan Mediterranean towns of the day were built at a distance inland from the coast due to the constant threat of pirate raids. Those masias (traditional Catalan farmhouses) that were closer to the coast usually had lookout towers to warn of approaching danger.
Ports, naturally, are right on the coast (okay, some might be up a river a ways!), and so Palamós was susceptible to attacks by pirates of varying nationalities. At the time of its founding, there was a relative lull in pirate activity in the western Mediterranean, due to the strength of the Catalan navy, which allowed Palamós to grow.
When we say “relative lull”, we just mean that things were not quite as bad yet as they were to become later. Palamós was attacked twice by Genoese pirates in its first couple of centuries as a port, but it was between the 16th and 19th centuries when Mediterranean pirates, especially those from North Africa, were at their worst and an ever-present menace to coastal towns everywhere. Despite the watchtower warning system, hundreds of small raids resulted in many families falling into ruin over the years, having to sell their property and possessions to pay ransoms for the rescue of loved ones taken by pirates.
Redbeard
Many Pirates of the Mediterranean attacked and raided wherever and whatever they could get their hands on, but many others were privateers and raided on behalf of kingdoms to which they were allied. One such example was the Franco-Ottoman alliance forged in 1543, against the Habsburg monarchy that ruled Spain at the time. This meant that French and Ottoman corsairs wouldn’t attack each other’s ships or ports, focusing instead on Spanish towns.
That very same year, the Ottoman pirate known as Barbarossa (Red Beard), attacked the town of Nice (at the time under the control of the Duke of Savoy, a Hapsburg ally), capturing it for France, before continuing on to raid Cadaqués and Roses.
On 5 October, Redbeard arrived at Palamós with over 20 ships. The pirates fired their cannons at the town from their ships before then breaching the walls of the town. Most of the townspeople managed to escape, but all of the men who remained to try and defend the town against the pirates, along with some reinforcements from Palafrugell, were killed, and many of their bodies mutilated and impaled.
Both churches mentioned above were burned and severely damaged, and the church bells were taken. Another chapel, called Nostra Senyora de Gràcia (Our Lady of Grace), at Sa Punta, the highest point in the town, as well as most of the town’s houses, were totally destroyed.
Barbarossa and his men hung around for two full days before continuing south on their rampage. A large proportion of the inhabitants never returned to Palamós but stayed to live in the neighbouring villages to which they had fled, as a result of the destruction. The news of the sacking of Palamós spread far and wide, and even Pope Paul III intervened to aid in the town’s recovery.
A fuller account of the raid, along with illustrations, was designed and produced by the Fishing Museum of Palamós in 2018 to mark the 475th anniversary of the Redbeard attack. If you’d like to read it (it’s not long), we’ve translated it from Catalan into English and you can read it here.
Wars, Walls and Defences
Following the deadly pirate attack of 1543, the construction of Palamós’ walls and bastions was accelerated to bolster the town’s defences by completely encircling it, except for one opening out to the sea itself at La Planassa, and a gate at Plaça dels Arbres, the edge of the old town. It turned out that those new defences would prove to be very necessary.
A hugely destructive pan-European war, known as the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648), was fought right across the continent, during which France and Spain found themselves on opposite sides. The ensuing Franco-Spanish War (1635-1659) was effectively a war within a greater war, and it continued after hostilities ceased elsewhere. And within the Franco-Spanish War, yet another conflict arose: the Reapers’ War (or Catalan Revolt: 1640-59), which saw the Catalans ally themselves with the French against the Spanish.
All this meant that Palamós became an important strategic military port and, as it changed hands a number of times, soldiers of many nationalities – Spaniards, French, Neapolitans, Milanese, Flemish, Irish and Germans, among others – were garrisoned inside and outside the town at different stages, some in barracks but mostly in private homes.
The Catalan Revolt effectively ended as a contest with the Siege of Barcelona (1651-52) when the Spanish recaptured the city from French and Catalan forces. The war would continue for a few more years, and although Spain managed to defeat the Catalans, they lost the overall battle to France. The result was the Treaty of the Pyrenees (1659) in which Spain ceded the Province of Roussillon, including the important city of Perpignan, to France, where it remains to this day.
Palamós’ defences were further fortified in the decades following the war when it was decided that a citadel was to be built on what was the highest part of the town at Sa Punta, where the lighthouse is today, on the site of the chapel of Nostra Senyora de Gràcia that was razed during Barbarossa’s “visit”. An Augustinian convent had been built on the site of the original chapel, and a compromise was reached with the resident monks, allowing them to remain in their current location. In contrast, the citadel was effectively built around them.
The Black Death
As if all that warfare wasn’t enough, the bubonic plague struck Barcelona during the aforementioned siege of the city in 1651, and it wasn’t long before the Black Death arrived in Palamós. The first fatality is recorded as having been buried on 26 March 1652, and the gates of the town were promptly shut, not reopening until almost six months later on 7 September, but with a series of quarantine restrictions – something we can all relate to now, following our recent Covid-19 experience!
From the outset, the overwhelming number of fatalities was such that recording deaths became an impossible task and was given up as a lost cause, and so the final death toll was unknown. What is known is that in early 1653, a piece of land outside the walls of Palamós was blessed by the parish priest, and up to 400 bodies were buried there, possibly more than half of the population of the town at that time.
The Second Destruction of Palamós
If the hope was that the presence of those monks within the citadel would provide some sort of divine protection, that hope was in vain. The French were back in Catalunya in 1694 during the Nine Years’ War (1688-97), another war whose theatre was so vast it reached far beyond the continent of Europe. They overran Verges and Torroella de Montgrí before turning their attention to the port of Palamós, whose capture was imperative if they hoped to achieve their ultimate goal of Barcelona.
The Spanish had already retreated south towards Barcelona, abandoning Palamós, but about 4,000 Neapolitan soldiers remained. French troops numbered about 12,000 plus 5,000 cavalry, and they knew Palamós well, having been garrisoned there previously. Despite their numerical inferiority, the defenders managed to resist for over a week, so heroically in fact that an impressed King Louis XIV of France had a special coin struck in commemoration.
In the assault, which began in May 1695, the citadel that had been built only a relatively short time before was demolished, convent and all, as were the bastions and parts of the new town walls built around Palamós following the Barbarossa raid. The purpose of such a scale of destruction was to make the town and port easier to capture in any future war, given their strategic importance.
A little later that same year, the town was also shelled by enemy ships during the French occupation, causing further damage. At the end of the Nine Years’ War, the French withdrew from Catalunya once more in order to gain favour with Spain in the upcoming dispute over who should sit on the Spanish throne.
The War of the Spanish Succession
As it turned out, the French were right about future wars. Without going into too much detail here, King Charles II of Spain (a Habsburg) died in 1700 without a direct heir. Philippe of Anjou, grandson of King Louis XIV of France (a Bourbon) was named King of Spain over his Austrian Hapsburg rival, Archduke Charles of Vienna. This led to the outbreak of the War of the Spanish Succession in 1701, and this would rage on until 1714. It pitted France and Spain against a Grand Alliance of other European states, which feared that a potential union of those two nations would eventually come to dominate all of Europe completely.
Catalunya, by now sick and tired of both the Spanish and the French, supported the Habsburg cause, resulting in Palamós again changing hands a number of times and soldiers of even more nationalities occupying the town on various occasions, among them Germans, Dutch, Swiss, Belgian and, of course, French and Spanish. As before, most of the cost of accommodating all these soldiers was borne by the inhabitants of the town.
The outcome of the war was that Philippe became King of Spain, but with a definitive separation of the crowns of Spain and France. Archduke Charles didn’t do too badly either, though, as he became Charles VI, Holy Roman Emperor.
Peace and War!
Philippe may have become King of Spain, and there was finally peace for a time in Catalunya, but the death of Charles VI (Holy Roman Emperor, remember?) in 1740 triggered another pan-European war, this time the Austrian War of Succession (1740-48). (So many wars about who got to sit on which throne!) During this war, British ships, being on the opposite side to the Spanish and French, bombed Palamós in 1742 with around 2,000 cannonballs, mostly damaging the port area and the Church of Santa Maria.
The almost constant warfare during the first half of the 18th century meant that all the young and able-bodied men were away fighting (or dead!), and only the women, the old and the very young remained, and living conditions for Palamosinos were, for the most part, pretty desperate, and poverty was widespread. This resulted in a significant decline in the town’s population.
More Piracy
After this latest European war eventually ended, there was no one dominant navy that could control the Western Mediterranean, and pirate ships from North Africa began marauding again. English pirates, operating as privateers, also attacked Spanish ports on behalf of their crown. Not to be outdone, the Catalans decided to get in on the act themselves with Catalan corsair ships operating out of Mallorca, and the ports of Barcelona, Mataró, Sant Feliu de Guíxols, Cadaqués and, of course, Palamós.
One such Palamós corsair, Martí Badia, along with his brother Constantí, was so successful in defeating Algerian, English and Maltese privateer ships that he was made lieutenant in the Spanish navy by King Charles III.
Napoleon
Wider European events were to impact Palamós again in the early 1800s during the Napoleonic Wars. In the Peninsular War between Spain and Napoleon’s France, the French once again occupied the town from July 1809 until March 1813 (apart from briefly in September 1810 when the Spanish retook it, and then lost again almost immediately).
As the tide in the greater war began to turn against Napoleon, the French slowly but surely began withdrawing from most of Catalunya as their troops were needed elsewhere. By March 1813, they had left Palamós once again. During the gradual French retreat from Catalunya, the once-important Castell de Vila-romà, in the hills just outside Palamós near Vall-llobrega, was mostly blown up so that enemy soldiers could not use it. The ruins can still be visited today if you enjoy a little hiking or mountain biking, although you can drive most of the way up.
The Count of Palamós
Back in 1484, Palamós was established as a county, and a Catalan nobleman with the rather lengthy name of Galcerán de Requesens i Joan de Soler was appointed its first Count in recognition of his services to the Crown of Aragón. By this stage, however, the Crowns of Aragón and Castilla had already been united through the marriage of King Fernando and Queen Isabella, known as the Catholic Monarchs, effectively creating the country of Spain.
Remember the founding charter of the town that guaranteed its citizens would forever live free of servitude? Well, so did the Palamosins, who refused to recognise the new Count until he formally acknowledged those rights. Interestingly, although lordships were officially abolished across Spain in 1811, the title of Count of Palamós remains in existence today. It was incorporated into the Duchy of Soma in 1502, and, believe it or not, there’s a guy somewhere out there today called Jaime Ruiz de Bucesta de Mora y Aragón who is still officially the Count of Palamós!
The Cork Industry
The cork industry in Palamós began in the mid-1700s but only became truly significant around the mid-1800s, no doubt due to the instability and turbulent nature of the times. Ironically, given the French involvement in much of that turbulence, the first manufacturers of cork stoppers (or tapers in Catalan, from the Occitan word tapiers) were French descendants. With the regulation of champagne production in France in 1681 came the need for cork stoppers.
Production started in Occitanie but soon crossed the Pyrenees, thanks to the vast cork oak forests in Les Gavarres and Albera in the Empordà region. Initially, traditional cork makers working in small workshops needed only a knife and a batch of cork, but gradually, they had to use manually operated machines. Then, motorised machinery was introduced to make the production process easier and faster.
Once it took off, the cork industry became the driving force behind most of the town’s growth and improvements, boosting the economy and leading to population increases. Towards the end of the 19th century, services such as running water, gas, and electricity were established, and various cultural, political, and recreational societies were formed.
Cork was also a substantial contributing factor in the construction of the railway line that linked Palamós to Girona, as well as in the building of the pier we see today, which was built in 1902 using rubble from the citadel and convent destroyed in 1695 at Sa Punta. The pier was remodelled again in 1910. At its peak, the cork industry in Baix Empordà is estimated to have employed around 4,000 people, and in the early 1900s, the region was a worldwide point of reference for cork production.
While Spain remained neutral, the outbreak of World War I in mid-1914 led to the collapse of the Palamós cork industry almost completely. Around 1,500 locals had already left in search of work by mid-1915. Poverty, hunger and inflation returned. By mid-1916, when things were at their worst, well over 800 Palamosins were relying on charity for food.
The exploitation of cork forests was largely abandoned, but the industry did re-emerge on a smaller and more specialised scale after World War II. Today, even though the cork factories of Palamós are gone, Catalunya remains one of the world’s leading producers of sparkling wine corks, accounting for 60% of global production.
Bleak times
After WWI came to an end, Spain saw a sharp decline in foreign trade, huge labour unrest, denial of basic workers’ rights by large companies (often by violent means), government repression of trade unions, and even domestic terrorism. It all culminated in a military coup in 1923 by General Miguel Primo de Rivera, head of the Catalan Army, with the support of King Alfonso XIII. His dictatorship lasted until the stock market crash in late 1929, marking the start of the global Great Depression. Not exactly great times to be living in!
And if the Spanish Second Republic, which began in 1931, gave a brief cause for hope, this was soon dashed by the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War (1936 – 1939), immediately followed by World War II (1939 – 1945). Tough times indeed!
Spanish Civil War
During the Spanish Civil War, Palamós, aligned with the Republican side, was bombed several times. It endured five naval attacks from Nationalist warships and aerial bombardments by Mussolini’s Italian air force, which supported Franco. The air raids were especially deadly: one strike in 1938 destroyed 30 buildings, killed 10 people, and wounded 40 more. That same year, a bombing also sank a British merchant ship in the Bay of Palamós.
From the Franco Years to Recent Times
The first 20 to 25 years of Franco’s dictatorship (1939 – 1975) were another difficult chapter in Spanish history, especially for regions like Catalunya and the Basque Country. El Generalísimo, as his followers called him, held more arbitrary power than any Spanish leader before or since. Under his regime, the Catalan language and culture were suppressed; even the traditional sardana dance was banned for not being “properly” Spanish.
The Catholic Church in Spain regained its status as the state religion. Civil servants had to be Catholic, and many jobs required a priest’s certificate of “good conduct.” Divorce, abortion, and contraceptives were illegal. Civil marriages conducted under the Republic were annulled. Women were required to obtain written permission from their fathers or husbands to work or open a bank account.
Tourism Changes Everything
Despite the repression, parts of the economy began to recover in the 1960s, especially tourism on the Costa Brava. Package holidays brought thousands of tourists from northern Europe to the region, drawn by the sunshine and low prices. Franco’s control over daily life relaxed slightly, and Spain slowly opened up to the outside world. The Costa Brava was designated as a key tourism zone, offering a quieter alternative to the crowded French Côte d’Azur.
The tourism boom came too late for the Palamós railway, which had been damaged during the Civil War, abandoned, and finally dismantled under Franco. However, in 1967, Girona-Costa Brava Airport began operating national and international flights, making the area more accessible.
To protect the coast, breakwaters (espigons) were built to stop the sand from Sant Antoni de Calonge drifting into the Port of Palamós, and land was reclaimed at La Planassa, where people now park their cars.
Back then, the sea came right up to El Mur (the wall), the stretch of Avinguda 11 de Setembre now filled with seaside restaurants. The Palamós promenade was built, and tourism slowly overtook fishing as the primary source of income in many Costa Brava towns.
Fortunately, the Costa Brava coastline avoided the large-scale high-rise developments seen elsewhere on the Spanish Mediterranean.
People of Palamós
In the early years after Palamós was founded, most new residents came from nearby towns and villages. Occasionally, men from southern France arrived in search of seasonal work, and often a wife. As the fishing port grew in importance, people from across the Mediterranean followed, primarily from Italy, Greece, and other Spanish coastal towns.
Later, the rise of the cork industry and the arrival of the railway brought workers from across Spain. In the 1950s, newly discovered fishing grounds off the Costa Brava attracted entire families of fishermen, particularly from Valencia and Tarragona. Many of them settled in El Pedró, a working-class neighbourhood where the Fishermen’s Guild had homes built specifically for them.
From the 1960s, tourism in Palamós became the town’s main economic draw. Many new arrivals came from Andalucía, seeking work in the growing service industry. Palamós surpassed 10,000 residents around 1970, and its population has continued to grow ever since.
Famous folk
Apart from migrants looking for work and a better life, the Costa Brava has also attracted a diverse group of celebrities to its shores over the years. Palamós has been home to actors Ava Gardner, John Wayne, and Madeleine Carroll. The American novelist Robert Ruark lived in Sant Antoni de Calonge for a time before his death and is buried in Palamós.
It was Ruark who convinced Palamós’ most famous resident to come to live in the town: Truman Capote. Between 1960 and 1962, Capote spent 18 months in Palamós in three stints, living for a while in the seafront Hotel Trias and later at La Catifa. It was there that he wrote much of his most famous book, In Cold Blood.
In the world of sport, Palamós is home to Adel Mechaal, a former European athletics champion in the 3000m event. Although born in Morocco, Mechaal came to Palamós as a baby and grew up there, so he is very much considered a Palamosino.
Palamós Today
Palamós is a thriving tourist destination, bustling in summer when thousands of visitors arrive from the Netherlands, Belgium, and France. Since 1995, it has been twinned with Rheda-Wiedenbrück in northwestern Germany. The port now welcomes around 67 cruise ships and approximately 65,000 passengers annually. But Palamós is more than just a holiday town.
Unlike many Mediterranean towns, it doesn’t go into “hibernation” during the off-season. The local economy keeps ticking thanks to year-round employment in the hospital, fisheries, and a diverse range of local businesses. Today, the permanent population stands at just over 18,000 (14% of whom are foreign), making it the third most populous town in Baix Empordà and the fifth in the Empordà region.
It’s known nationwide for its Gambas de Palamós and D.O. Empordà wines. It’s also home to the second-oldest football club in Spain and the oldest in Catalunya: Palamós C.F., founded a year before F.C. Barcelona. Their colours are blue and gold, matching the town’s shield.
The original harbour, now known as Port Vell, is the largest on the Costa Brava. Since 1992, the Marina Palamós has complemented it on the east side of the promontory. Port Vell has 250 moorings for leisure boats up to 25 metres; the Marina adds 866 more for yachts up to 30 metres.
Museu de la Pesca
If you’re interested in historic photographic exhibitions and similar events, we recommend checking out the Fishing Museum of Palamós. Housed in a former boat shed, it claims to be the first museum dedicated to fishing around the entire Mediterranean. Apart from fishing-related “stuff,” such as the fish auction, the market, or even cooking classes, they also occasionally have temporary exhibitions, including some with old photos and stories from around the region. It’s well worth checking out.
