Half an hour out of Barcelona - 40 minutes if traveling by train, an option to consider, given the lack of parking space and the city's narrow streets - lies a placid and beautiful place that has succeeded in safeguarding its tranquility and its exceptional quality of life, despite being a seaside resort that lives off tourism. A resort that, as well as being subject to the pressure of a neighboring city as large as Barcelona, has a population of 4.5 million inhabitants. That place is Sitges. A small city that has managed to preserve the charm of its privileged location due to the forward looking vision of one of its mayors in the 1960s, a man who refused to turn his town into a major tourist trap. Without the typically oversized buildings of this coastline, Sitges is built for people, on a scale that does not need to try to overcome irreparable damage to its landscape.
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With a Mediterranean feel to it, the city's light is intense, crisp and white, the same color as that of many of its buildings. And the sea, in tight communion with the city, is always there, penetrating all of its nooks and turns, especially in the old part of town where you see it after every corner and turn of the road.
Perhaps it was this phenomenal combination of light and sea that drove the genial and outlandish modernist writer and painter Santiago Rusiñol to choose, together with a group of bohemian friends and artists, this city as his working and creative headquarters. Rusiñol relocated here at the end of the 19th century when Sitges was little more than a fishing village. Summer is when Sitges is at its best. Yet now, this period, when Spring is bursting at the seams and the sun is recovering its strength - and in Sitges almost every day is a sunny day - lures the visitor to go for a morning or afternoon stroll through the town's streets and squares and to savor the local fish.
A city tour must unavoidably take us to visit the promontory on the cliff where Santiago Rusiñol built his house-cum-workshop of Cau Ferrat. Today a modernism museum holding, on top of the artist's own works, two El Greco paintings, one Picasso, works by Ramón Casas and Miguel Utrillo and Zuloaga. Together with Rusiñol's own collection exhibiting a wide variety of forged-irons, ceramics and glass pieces gathered by this compulsive collector throughout his life.
Next door to the Cau Ferrat is the Maricel Museum, also showcasing modernist art and across it is the Palau Maricel. As added value to the interior architecture and the works of art of both the Cau Ferrat and Maricel Museum raises the view of the sea through the wide windows, a sea perpetually crashing against the rocks underneath the buildings.
The area where the two buildings stand, behind the church, is a feast for the senses. Its narrow, stone-paved streets lead on one side to a rectangular square just above the small, protected beach of San Sebastián and on the other side, after passing a balcony overlooking the sea, to the church's square, an imposing 17th century building towering over Sitges. Together with the promontory - here they call it the baluarte - the church has lent its image to the city's international promotional campaign. From the square in front of the church, flanked by the sea on one side and the old city center on the other, it is possible to sea the calm urbanization of the newer areas, distorted only by a few ugly buildings on the seaside promenade constructed years ago. With its palm trees and endless beach, this promenade serves to round off Sitges's international appeal.
Bordering the church and the town hall, the walk through the city could continue through the interior, following the Major and the Parellades streets. There you will find the typical commercial axis of all Mediterranean towns. A network of narrow streets allowing glimpses of the sea at every turn. Full of shops displaying the latest in fashion, dotted with local cafés that have escaped the homogenizing current sweeping through these kind of establishments of late and where sitting down to have a beer is a real special treat. Art galleries abound in this area, as well as antique and interior design shops. All of it very far from the crammed storefronts of beach resorts used to hosting hordes and hordes of tourists.
In this old part of town it is possible to find noteworthy palaces from the turn of the century coexisting in har
mony with palm trees and modest buildings. Built by the so-called indianos - Sitges natives who returned rich to their hometown after migrating to America in search of wealth and fortune - each palace is proportional in size, architecture and decorative abundance to the fortune amassed by its owner in the Caribbean. Modernist architecture is present in some of these buildings.
Our stroll could continue down any of the streets that run perpendicular to the sea. One of the most popular ones, known as El Pecado, or Sin Street, is packed with bars with outdoor seating and lots of tourists strutting their stuff. The soft slope leads directly to the seaside promenade, to its palm trees and to its restaurants, so appealing to hungry, avid walkers. To the left are the church's promontory and the Cau Ferrat area, in front, as always, the beach and the sea.
From the 1950s onwards, the combination of this tranquil urban layout - not too shrill and with the appeal of the light and the sun - began to attract, in the same way as it did Santiago Rusiñol and his accolades a century before that, an entirely different kind of tourism: Tourism from part of the gay community. These elements, inextricably linked to the town's tolerant spirit, ranked Sitges top among homosexuals' holiday preferences.
* Este artículo apareció en la edición impresa del Viernes, 15 de marzo de 2002