We have already written about some of the medieval villages in the Empordà region, including Peratallada and Palau-sator, Pals, the regional capital La Bisbal d’Empordà as well as a cluster of smaller Medieval Villages nearby. In this piece, we won’t be moving very far away geographically – only as far as Ullastret – but we’d like to take you much further back in time.
The original Iberians
We are travelling all the way back to ancient times, to when Iberians populated this part of the peninsula that still bears their name. The Iberians were an ancient people indigenous to the eastern part of what is Spain today, in lands that stretched from eastern Andalucía and Murcia in the southeast, all the way up the Mediterranean coast, including the hinterland, through the Empordà region of Catalunya, and even beyond into parts of the Languedoc-Roussillon region of southern France.
Although the Iberian Peninsula had already been inhabited by anatomically modern humans for over 40,000 years, Iberians began to develop as a culture around the 6th century BCE. They were not a unified people but rather a collection of different tribes who shared cultural and linguistic characteristics, who traded, intermarried and sometimes fought each other.
Of course, they didn’t call themselves “Iberians” either; it was the Greeks, and later the Romans, who gave the name “Iberia” to the peninsula that is today home to Spain and Portugal and “Iberians” to its people, and the name stuck. Although the Romans often used the term “Iberian” to refer to all the peoples that lived here, in fact, most of the west, centre, and north of the peninsula was home to Celtic tribes, as well as Aquitanian tribes in the north whose language evolved to become the Basque language still spoken today.
Linguists believe that the language spoken by the Iberians would have been related to some degree to that of the Aquitanian tribes, but, as it was lost to time before it could be properly recorded, it is officially listed as an “unclassified language”. Like the rest of the pre-Roman languages on the peninsula, Iberian tongues gradually disappeared as the whole peninsula become Romanised, leaving us today with languages descended from Latin: Portuguese, Gallego, Castellano, Catalan, Aragones and Astur-Leonese, along with their various dialects. Only Euskera (Basque) still remains as a language from pre-Roman times.
The Empordà Iberians
Just outside today’s medieval village of Ullastret lie the ruins of an Iron Age settlement that was one of the largest such settlements of all the Iberian territories. In fact, it was more than a mere settlement but rather a city and actually the capital of the lands ruled by the Indiketes (also spelt “Indigetes”), a confederation of four tribes that occupied lands that roughly correspond to the Province of Girona we know today: the Empordà region, plus territory further to the west and also down the coast to Lloret de Mar – basically what we today call the Costa Brava, and then some.
Sites of other Indiketae settlements are also to be found locally at Platja de Castell and La Fosca, both in Palamós. The Indiketes were the original “Costa Bravans”!
The Iberian way of life developed from its primitive origins to become a culture in its own right mainly due to contact with peoples of the eastern Mediterranean, specifically the Phoenicians/Carthaginians and Greeks, who travelled all over the Mediterranean and formed settlements whose main purpose was originally trade and exchange rather than conquest.
Just up the road from Ullastret, on the outskirts of L’Escala, are the ruins of the Greco-Roman settlement of Emporion (meaning “place of trade”) which had a population of about 1,000 (similar to other secondary Iberian settlements in the region), and with whom the Indiketes had a friendly trading relationship. The Greek name Emporion lingers on today in the modern name of the settlement, Empúries, and also in the name of this wonderful region, the Empordà, that includes almost the entire length of the Costa Brava and its hinterland.
The City of Indika
As already mentioned, the settlement at Ullastret was really more of a city in its day and the population is estimated to have been around 6,000 inhabitants. It is also believed that its Iberian name was something along the lines of “Indika” or “Undika” – Ullastret being, of course, the Catalan name for the nearby medieval town founded many centuries later.
The site for their capital was strategically chosen by the Indiketes because of its commanding views over the surrounding lands – and also a lake! When we visit “Indika” today we can see lands far into the distance, but in the time of the Indiketes the same view also took in a large lake that no longer exists today.
In fact, the city of Indika was made up of two parts; the settlement at the ruins that we can visit today on the hill known as Puig de Sant Andreu and a second smaller population centre on an island called Illa d’en Reixac about 300 metres away in the middle of a lake that would have been about twice the size of Lake Banyoles today. Standing on the hill where the museum is now, and looking in the direction of Castell de Montgrí, we can see the flat plains where the lake once was. The lake was drained for agriculture in the second half of the 19th century.
Speaking of the Castell de Montgrí, you may wonder why the Indiketes didn’t choose that as the site for their capital. The answer is pretty straightforward really – probably for the same reason the 13th-century castle that is still perched on top was never completed. Although its superior elevation might have offered views even farther into the distance, it also made it almost as inaccessible to potential inhabitants as to possible invaders!
And so the city of Indika was built where we see it today, and with walls and defences that would’ve been pretty impressive for their time. Today they are the best-preserved of any Iberian settlement in all of Catalunya. To the expert eye, the influence of the nearby Greek colonies of Emporion (Empúries) and Rhode (Roses) and their trade with the eastern Mediterranean are clearly seen in Indika and in how it was structured.
The Indiketes also built a couple of temples on the site where the museum is today and, although very little is known about their worship, it is believed that the wolf was in some way sacred to the Iberians. There are examples of their writing here too but, in the absence of an Iberian equivalent of the Rosetta Stone, we are so far unable to translate their language to learn more.
Built to impress!
Being their capital, the Indiketes built Indika to be symbolic as well as functional and it was well-planned before construction would have begun. It had a well-organized urban structure with main and secondary streets, and, most importantly, its city walls.
Those walls were up to 8 metres high with 10 metre high watchtowers. They were built to impress and deter other neighbouring tribes as much as to defend from any attacks from them. It must have worked too as experts believe that attacks were generally quite rare and any warfare that did occur in Iberian times was only a result of scarcity of food due to occasional poor harvests. Mostly the Iberian tribes would have traded with rather than fought each other and so the defensive walls of Indika were more than adequate in the rare event of an attack from the likes of the Illergetae, for example (see map).
Adequate, that is, until a far superior force invaded their lands: the Romans!
The Romans are coming!
Remember the Phoenicians? Those largely peaceful traders from the eastern Med, those same lovely people who introduced viticulture to this part of the world? Well, their less peaceful descendants, the Carthaginians, having lost the First Punic War against Rome, had begun to occupy the Iberian peninsula in order to try and pay their enormous war debts to those very same Romans.
Starting from the south they spent two years conquering Iberian and Celtic tribes and had advanced as far as the River Ebro in today’s southern Catalunya. En route they also sacked the Roman-allied city of Saguntum (just north of Valencia today), thus beginning the Second Punic War. This was the war where Hannibal famously crossed the Pyrenees and Alps with his war elephants, and it was effectively the World War of its time, involving Celtic, Iberian and Gallic tribes, amongst many others, fighting either for or against the Romans or Carthaginians, or both!
In this war, most Iberian tribes allied themselves with, or at least were mercenaries for, the Carthaginians, as did – importantly for the Indiketes – the Illergetae who lived to the north of the Ebro and were their neighbours to the west. Thus they began to attack Indiketae territory – and this time not because of any poor harvests.
The beginning of the end
It is debated whether the Indiketes actually allied themselves with Rome as a result of these attacks, or whether they were simply collateral casualties as the Romans came through their lands to engage in battle with the Carthaginians and their allies. In any case, allegiance to either side made little difference in the long run as the end result was the same: the Roman victory in the war was the beginning of the end of the Iberian culture on the entire peninsula.
In 218 BCE, the first year of the war, Indikete lands already came under Roman control when the Greeks at Emporion allowed their Roman allies to build a fort right next to their settlement – and so it began. The Greco-Roman ruins at St. Martí d’Empuries make for another fascinating visit. In 195 BCE the Indiketes eventually rebelled against their conquerors but, predictably, were ruthlessly crushed. Even their shared worship of the wolf with the Romans wasn’t enough to save them.
Undoubtedly the Romans would eventually have made their way to Iberia anyway during the course of their conquests, but the Second Punic War marked the beginning of Romanisation and the assimilation of its indigenous peoples into the Roman way of life. It also provoked the mass abandonment of the city of Indika.
Visiting the ruins
“The Iberian-era archaeological complex of Ullastret, declared a Cultural Heritage of National Interest, is today made up of a unique conglomerate of sites, among which the two habitat nuclei (Puig de Sant Andreu and Illa d’en Reixac) and the necropolis of Puig de Serra (Serra de Daró) stand out. This, together, constitutes one of the most important archeological ensembles of protohistory in the Western Mediterranean, both for its entity and for the research developed almost uninterruptedly since the beginning of its excavations in 1947.”
This fascinating archaeological site and museum can be visited all year round and is open every day except Mondays. From June to September it is open from 10:00 till 20:00, and the other eight months of the year from 10:00 to 18:00.
Entry is €5 per adult and €3 for over 65s. It is free for under-16s and the unemployed, and is also free for absolutely everyone on the first Sunday of every month, except in the high tourist season. (This is also true of most other museums in Catalunya.) There are also certain other dates when entry is free of charge (unless they happen to fall on a Monday!)
You can read more, purchase tickets and check for days when admission is free on the macullastret website, which is available in Catalan, Spanish, French and English. The “mac” in macullastret doesn’t mean to suggest Ullastret is Irish or Scottish; it stands for Museu d’Arqueologia de Catalunya and the “Ullastret”… well, that’s because Ullastret is just one of the five museums managed by the M.A.C.
There is an audio tour available that works by scanning barcodes using your smartphone at different points along the tour. The barcodes are numbered so you can follow the suggested route and most of the audio clips are between about 90 seconds and 3 minutes long. The audio tour is also available in Catalan, Spanish, French and English, and gives a very easy-to-listen-to explanation as you walk around the ruins, with their streets, water and food stores, drainage system, houses, and so on. If possible bring your own earphones.
The small museum, which houses lots of artifacts from around the local area, is the only indoor part of the tour. All of the text inside the museum is in Catalan only, but your audio guide will explain as you continue the tour.
Virtual tour
As well as seeing the ruins and trying to imagine what life might have been like back in Iberian times, we can now virtually see the town of Indika in all of its past glory. A virtual reconstruction using advanced virtual reality glasses in a multi-screen projection room was added to the museum in 2022 and now provides visitors with a more immersive audiovisual experience.
Click on this link for a taste of the “virtual multimodal museum” experience on the official Patrimoni Cultural website with explanatory text in English. We can’t wait to check it out ourselves in person!
Ruta dels Indiketes
No doubt you’ve all heard of the famous Camino de Santiago, and probably of the Camino de Ronda here on the Costa Brava. Well, now there’s another spectacular hiking trail that takes in much of the Empordà called the Ruta dels Indiketes. The name is fairly self-explanatory as it refers to a walking or biking trail that covers much of the territory of the ancient Iberian tribe.
Originally conceived back in 2013, the route has no starting or ending point, the idea being that people can start or end wherever they like and just cover the sections they like. Similar to the Camino de Santiago, hikers and bikers can earn an Indikete diploma showing that they have completed a minimum of 100kms on foot or 200kms by bike. about 85% of the route is the same for both walkers and bikers and there are only a few short sections where bikes have to take a detour, but still cover all the most important points of interest.
You can check out the 476km route in detail on the Ruta dels Indiketes website and also make accommodation reservations if required. The route is broken down into stages and each stage is explained clearly, including its length and degree of difficulty. Much of the coastal part is shared with the GR92, or Camino de Ronda and there are numerous beautiful miradors and points of historical interest along the way. All in all, it’s worth every bit of effort!
Other archaeological sites
And so there you have it; a fascinating way to spend an afternoon while learning about the original inhabitants of these beautiful lands we now call home – or are just visiting!
As we mentioned, the best website to find out about interesting archaeological sites and museums throughout Catalunya is the Museu d’Arqueologia de Catalunya.
