Village
Arenys de Mar is a fishing town in the Maresme comarca, in the province of Barcelona, known for bobbin lace and its modernist cemetery, with the church of Santa Maria presiding over the centre. Although the settlement of Arenys de Munt already existed in the late 9th century, the coastal town is younger: from the 13th century some inhabitants settled on the shore to work in fishing and maritime transport, and the district was protected by as many as thirteen fortified towers against piracy. In 1575 the residents of the Ribera obtained a licence to build their own church, and in 1599 the Viscount of Cabrera fixed the boundary of the sea parish and granted it its own municipal government. Today its fishing port is the leading one in the province. It has 17,042 inhabitants (INE 2025).
Monument
Baroque parish church of Arenys de Mar, dedicated to Our Lady of the Assumption, whose image presides over the notable altarpiece by Pau Costa on the main altar; it belongs to the diocese of Girona and was consecrated on 28 July 1686. It arose from the separation of the parish of Sant Martí d'Arenys, today Arenys de Munt, of which Arenys de Mar was until then the maritime neighbourhood of La Ribera, because of the difficulty of crossing the stream when it rained and the risk of piracy. On 11 July 1574 the heads of family of La Ribera met at the beach's defence tower, La Fortaleza, and agreed to request permission to build their own church; the bishop of Girona granted it on 18 March 1575, although the rector continued to depend on the mother parish until 1781.
Monument
The Torre dels Encantats is a 13th-century fortress located on the coast of Arenys de Mar (Maresme, Barcelona), around which an Iberian settlement of the Laietani tribe was discovered in 1881, at Puig Castellar. Excavations directed from 1930 by Josep Maria Pons i Guri established that the site was inhabited between the 5th century and the mid-1st century BC; silos, dwellings, an iron foundry and more than forty ceramic loom weights for vertical looms have been found there. During the Civil War part of its stones were used to build coastal batteries.
Monument
Also known as the Torre d'en Llobet and, originally, the Torre de la Boada, it was built around 1560 at number 43 of carrer d'Avall. It is of circular plan, has three storeys and retains the corbels of the machicolation and arrow-slits distributed around the perimeter; the windows were opened later, once the danger from corsairs had receded.
Monument
The cemetery of Arenys de Mar, also known as the cemetery of Sinera, stands facing the sea atop the Puig de la Pietat hill, to the west of the town, and is a characteristic example of Mediterranean sea cemeteries. The poet Salvador Espriu immortalised it under the name Sinera, reversing the letters of Arenys, and today he is buried there alongside the Arenys-born writers Fèlix Cucurull and Lluís Ferran de Pol. The site brings together a collection of funerary art of great interest, with Modernista tombs and mausoleums designed and carved during the first two decades of the 20th century, among them the mausoleum of Iu Bosch, the work of architect Enric Sagnier, with sculptures by renowned artists such as Josep Llimona and Venancio Vallmitjana.
Monument
The Torre de Can Cabirol is an old rectangular defence tower located on a street of terraced houses in Arenys de Mar, in the Maresme (Barcelona), declared a Cultural Asset of National Interest. Only the upper part, with a turret on one of its sides, stands free; the rest forms part of a group of dwellings that has greatly altered its original appearance, with a ground floor now converted into three storeys with windows. Arenys de Mar, a town since 1599 and of great maritime importance in the 18th and 19th centuries, had to raise defence towers such as this one in the face of the danger of piracy on its coast.
Monument
The Carrer Ample tower rises on a street of terraced houses in Arenys de Mar, next to a fortified house that has since disappeared. The ground floor, quadrangular in plan, is adjoined to the neighbouring houses and today serves as a garage and storeroom for a food shop; the two upper floors are cylindrical in plan, with a weathered stone balcony on the second and a small window on the third, beneath a series of corbels running along the crowning. Inside, a Gothic ribbed vault is preserved. It was built in the second half of the 16th century and is popularly known as the Torre de la Palla.
Activity
The Festa de Sant Roc of Arenys de Mar is celebrated on 16 August and commemorates the town's 1607 vow (Vot de Vila), when the townspeople sought the protection of Sant Roc against the plague; it is recognised as a Festa Patrimonial d'Interès Nacional, and its most characteristic event is the procession of "macips i macipes" (young men and women), who bless the townspeople with basil-scented water using traditional "almorratxa" sprinklers.
Historical milestone
In 1779 provisional permission arrived to open a school of navigation in Arenys de Mar (Maresme, Barcelona), founded by Josep Baralt i Torres at the request of the Sant Elm guild following the 1778 decree that ended the monopoly of the ports of Seville and Cadiz. It received final approval in 1780 and classes began in 1782, first in Baralt's own house and, from 1783, in a building on the Camino Real known as the Pilots' School, attended by students from all over Catalonia, the Balearic Islands, Alicante, Tortosa, Málaga and even Galicia. Recognised as the Royal School of Navigation in 1802, it remained open until 1874: its classrooms produced the crews who sustained Catalan trade with the colonies, in a town that in 1786 had 59 ships bound for America built in its five shipyards.
Historical milestone
From the eighteenth century the women of the villa worked bobbin lace as a supplement to the seafaring wage, with stitches and patterns of their own. The collection donated by Frederic Marès gave rise to a museum devoted to this craft.
Food and drink
The most active fishing port of the comarca auctions each afternoon the catch of the day: langoustines, prawns, sardines and rock fish. The sale by open outcry supplies the restaurants of the coast and can be followed from the auction room.