Village
Castelldefels is a coastal town in the Baix Llobregat comarca, in the province of Barcelona, with the castle of Fels and numerous rural watchtowers scattered across its territory. Already mentioned as Castrum Felix, from which its present name derives, it was originally a cluster of scattered farmhouses that in the mid-20th century became a summer resort for many people from Barcelona. Important prehistoric remains have been found in its surroundings, such as the Cova Fumada, inhabited since the Middle Palaeolithic, and the Cova del Rinoceront, with fauna 500,000 years old and flints that could place human presence in the municipality at around 100,000 years ago; Bronze Age remains have also been found near Can Baixeres. It has 70,057 inhabitants (INE 2025).
Monument
The castle of Castelldefels, situated on a promontory above the old town, has medieval origins: the first documents citing its existence date from the 10th century, when it was linked to the monastery of Sant Cugat del Vallès. It served as a defensive fortification against Berber incursions and later as a seigneurial residence. Between the 15th and 16th centuries it was architecturally transformed, and in 1897 the banker Manuel Girona acquired it and commissioned a major restoration led by the architect Enric Sagnier, which gave it its current appearance as a cubic building with a ground floor and three storeys, with a cylindrical tower, battlements and machicolations of medieval inspiration. During the Civil War the church within the complex was used as a prison. Listed as a Bien de Interés Nacional (Catalonia's highest level of heritage protection), it was restored again in 1979.
Monument
La Barona, also called Torre Barona or Torre del Baró, stands atop a hill in Castelldefels, from where there is a splendid view over the coast and the sea. It is a three-storey cylindrical tower with masonry walls more than a metre thick: the ground floor and first floor form a single room, while the upper floor, partly covered, was where sentries kept watch and, in the event of an attack, sent smoke and fire signals. The first floor was reached, after crossing a drawbridge, by an exterior staircase of reddish stone which originally had more than sixty narrow steps without a railing, of which about forty-four survive today, now fitted with an added railing. Documented as the Torre de la Guarda del Mar, it was built in 1583 by order of Hug Joan Fivaller de Palou i de Marc, baron of Eramprunyà, and declared a historic-artistic monument in 1949; today it is integrated into the gardens of the Hotel Don Jaime.
Monument
Can Gomar, also known over time as Can Claret (1883-1909), Can Minguet or Can Gomà (1920) and Can Ballester (1932), stands at the foot of the Turó del Castell, on the edge of the urban centre of Castelldefels, between Can Roca de Baix and the old farmhouse of Ca n'Arnau. It is a circular tower surrounded by a continuous machicolation, built in the 16th century, like others in Castelldefels, to watch over the coast against Turkish corsair raids; it is joined at ground-floor level to a rectangular two-storey farmhouse by a small bridge, both built of red marès stone. Today they are municipal property and serve as a cultural centre.
Monument
A Gothic wayside cross from the 15th century, today lacking the cross itself -whose original form is unknown- and preserving only the capital, the hexagonal shaft and the supporting base, to which a possible Romanesque origin is attributed. Its original location is unknown, although by 1932 it already stood at its current site, in the Bellamar housing development. The bas-reliefs decorating the capital are today badly deteriorated and difficult to identify. It is listed as a bien cultural de interés nacional (Catalonia's highest level of heritage protection).
Monument
The Torre de Can Valls de la Muntanyeta, not far from the grounds of the castle of Castelldefels, is a defensive tower documented in 1560 and listed as a bien cultural de interés nacional (Catalonia's highest level of heritage protection). Square in plan, it preserves a small window and, on the north side, two access doors: one on the ground floor, with a lintel, giving onto the storage area, and another on the first floor, a voussoired round arch, which gave access to the main rooms by means of a drawbridge now gone. Above these doors the corbels that once supported a machicolation, also lost, can still be seen, and it has lost the elements that once crowned it. It is built of rubble masonry, with reddish ashlar stones at its four corners.
Monument
A 16th-century defensive tower that preserves a stone with the inscription “IXS-XPS. GABRIEL FOLCHER PER ELL E PER LOS SEUS. MDLX,” which dates its construction to 1560; the current battlements were added in a restoration in the 1950s. It stands about 80 metres from the Climent Savall tower, with a square floor plan and access through the first floor; the ground floor, with an independent entrance, was used as a storehouse or stable. On two of its façades the machicolation is preserved, a defensive element from which the base of the wall was watched over and defended.
Monument
A complex formed by a defensive tower and a masia (fortified farmhouse) in Castelldefels (Baix Llobregat), declared a Bien Cultural de Interés Nacional (Catalonia's highest level of heritage protection). The tower, of quadrangular plan, is crowned with stepped battlements and preserves a machicolation; at the rear a French window opens with a lintel and jambs of large ashlars, along with a few arrow slits. The adjoining farmhouse, known as Cal Patxoca since 1930, has an irregular plan, with a ground floor and one upper floor, and a gabled roof; in 1930 it still ended in battlements like the tower, which had already lost them by 1967, when a renovation project was drawn up. The plans for that renovation show a voussoired doorway, a twin Gothic window and a one-piece lintel window, probably from the 16th century, with a rear balcony. BCIN 4071-MH.
Monument
The Torre Moruna is a building in Castelldefels declared a Bien Cultural de Interés Nacional (Catalonia's highest level of heritage protection). It is an isolated defensive tower, circular in plan with a cylindrical body, built of irregular ashlars laid in courses and today largely covered in ivy, which barely allows one to see whether any opening survives; its surviving height is under three metres. It was originally a watchtower on a hill facing the sea, on the cliffs of the Garraf, forming part of the surveillance line between the Torre Barona and the Torre de Sant Salvador. Its current name seems to have been given by one of the area's landowners after the Civil War.
Monument
Can Vinyes i Torre de Sant Salvador is a masia in Castelldefels with a 16th-century core, formed of three original sections, to which one more was added around 1950 and a porch in 1983; it has an attached defensive tower with a square plan and an added storey, as well as the hermitage of Sant Salvador dels Arenys, from which it took its name and out of whose lands it was formed, when it was called Les Vinyes de Sant Salvador. In front of the farmhouse a boundary cross is preserved, beside the old royal road to the Garraf. Between the 13th and 14th centuries there was a travellers' hospital next to the chapel of Sant Salvador. It is a Bien Cultural de Interés Nacional (BCIN 4074-MH, Catalonia's highest level of heritage protection).
Monument
The Torre de Can Roca de Baix, heavily restored, preserves the corner ashlars of reddish stone and a defensive machicolation typical of its original watchtower function. Around it a farmhouse was built up over time, whose oldest section retains doors and windows with sills, jambs and lintels carved from a single piece of red sandstone; the more recent addition is covered by a single sloped roof.