Village
Palafrugell is a coastal town in the comarca of the Baix Empordà, in the province of Girona, situated at the foot of the Gavarres hills, in the central part of the Costa Brava, with 24,543 inhabitants (INE 2025). Its old town preserves the tradition of the cork industry, which had its origins in the Can Mario factory and which today occupies the same building as the Cork Museum, along with a rich colonial-era heritage linked to that period of prosperity. Palafrugell gives its name to the famous coves of Calella, Llafranc and Tamariu, with a 12 km stretch of coastline of jagged coves and small beaches that have made it one of the most important tourist destinations in the Girona comarques; in summer its population reaches 60,000, compared with the 20,000 who live there in winter.
Village
Calella de Palafrugell is a population entity of the municipality of Palafrugell, in the Baix Empordà, right on the Costa Brava, with 634 inhabitants (INE 2025), mostly from old fishing families. A former fishing village with whitewashed houses by the sea, arches over the water and boats drawn up on the sand, during the 19th century it was a port of entry and exit for goods from Palafrugell and La Bisbal, with a brisk export trade in cork stoppers, wine and coral; with the arrival of steamships, traffic moved to larger ports such as Palamós. The writer Josep Pla settled here after the war, and it was at the old Hotel Batlle that Joan Manuel Serrat composed Mediterráneo. Every July it hosts the Cantada d'Havaneres, which draws thousands of people to the beach.
Village
Llafranc is a small coastal settlement in the municipality of Palafrugell, in the Baix Empordà, situated right on the Costa Brava, with a marina and a beach at the foot of the Sant Sebastià headland. In 1964 the Can Mina de los Torrents dolmen was discovered near its beach, testifying to human presence there four or five thousand years ago, and in Roman times it was a notable centre of wine and pottery production, of which the remains of a press and a cellar are still preserved next to the church of Santa Rosa. In 1857 the lighthouse that today crowns the headland was inaugurated on the nearby Cape of San Sebastián. Since the late 19th century, Llafranc has become a popular summer resort, while retaining the charm of Costa Brava villages from before the age of mass tourism.
Village
Tamariu is the smallest and quietest of Palafrugell's three beaches, right on the Costa Brava, in a bay flanked by orthoclase formations to the north and limestone rock to the south. It was originally a fishing settlement where boats and tackle were kept; in the early 20th century the first houses were built, and shortly afterwards the first summer visitors arrived, until it became the tourism-oriented settlement it is today. The writer Josep Pla devoted pages of El meu país to describing the spirit of the place. In the 1960s the nightspot La Raqueta operated in Tamariu, where artists such as Carmen Amaya and Joan Manuel Serrat performed. Today it is a starting point for scuba diving and sailing, and every 15 August it celebrates its main festival, with habanera singing.
Monument
The Restes de la muralla medieval de Palafrugell are a preserved stretch of the walled enclosure that protected the town, in the Baix Empordà (Girona). Built between the 15th and 16th centuries, it had an irregular course that followed the present-day streets of Cavallers, els Valls, plaça Nova and Pi i Margall, with seven circular towers. Six of them were demolished between 1816 and 1818, and the last, next to the Plaça Nova, in 1908. Today a round arch survives on the Plaça Nova, made of small, regular ashlar blocks, now rendered. It has been declared a bien cultural de interès nacional (a cultural property of national interest) since 1988.
Monument
The Torre de Can Mario rises at the centre of the complex of the former Can Mario cork factory, in the very heart of the town of Palafrugell (Baix Empordà), founded by Joan Miquel Avellí, known as Juanito Màrius. Designed by the architect Josep Guitart i Lostaló and dated 1904, it is a water-tower and watchtower formed by a helical metal structure on a cylindrical stone base, with a water tank and, on a second level, a lookout post; the ensemble is topped by a conical capital with a weathervane. Declared a Bien Cultural de Interés Nacional (Spain's highest level of heritage protection), while the rest of the factory complex is protected as a Bien Cultural de Interés Local (a cultural property of local interest). Today the tower and the factory house the Museu del Suro de Palafrugell (Cork Museum).
Monument
A 16th-17th-century watchtower beside the sanctuary of Sant Sebastià de la Guarda, at the top of the headland between Llafranc and Tamariu.
Nature
The cala d'Aigua Xelida is a rocky cove of the Costa Brava situated between Tamariu and Llafranc, in the municipality of Palafrugell (Baix Empordà), prized for its seabed and a symbol of the yearning for free life in the Palafrugell spirit: it was the first stop on a failed journey recounted by Josep Pla together with the fisherman Sebastià Puig Barceló, known as l'Hermós. It is made up of several tiny beaches -that of la Font, that of la Sorellera or that d'en Gotes- and one somewhat larger, the Platja Gran, of pebbles and surrounded by rocks and pine woods. Until 1950 it remained isolated from any urban centre, connected to Tamariu only by a dirt track. In 2009 its small beach was the image of the winning candidacy of the Costa Brava for the El paisatge favorit de Catalunya programme.
Nature
Urban beach located in the centre of the bay of Tamariu, also called platja Gran, next to the seafront promenade of the Tamariu settlement, in the municipality of Palafrugell, at the southern end of the natural interest area of the Begur Mountains. It is bordered to the west by a line of rocks separating it from the cala es Portió, and to the east by rocky outcrops separating it from the cala Aiguadolça; the Tamariu stream flows into it. Facing south-east, it is 160 metres long with an average width of 24 metres, of coarse sand and a fairly steep entry into the sea. It has all kinds of services, including access for people with reduced mobility, and on its seafront promenade grow pines and tamarisks, which give the beach its name.
Nature
Llafranc beach, in the municipality of Palafrugell (Baix Empordà), lies within the urban surroundings of Llafranc, inside the bay of the same name. It is bordered to the east by the cape of Sant Sebastià, which shelters it from the tramontana wind, and to the west by a stretch of rocks along which the coastal path runs towards Canadell beach; to its left lies the port of Llafranc. It is 347 metres long with an average width of 29 metres, of medium-grained sand and a moderate slope, with high occupancy in summer. It has all kinds of services and access ramps for people with reduced mobility, a tree-lined seafront promenade with bars and restaurants, and has been awarded the Blue Flag.
Nature
Canadell beach, whose name recalls the reeds that used to grow there, lies right in the urban centre of Calella de Palafrugell, between the Conill point, to the west, and a rocky stretch along which the coastal path runs towards Llafranc, one kilometre away. Facing south-south-east, it is 191 metres long and 17 metres wide, with coarse sand and gravel, and is flanked by summer houses from the early 20th century, some of them former fishermen's huts now converted into dwellings. It holds the blue flag for the quality of its waters and has lifeguard, shower and cleaning services, and the seafront promenade running along it, the work of architect Joan Pericot i Garcia dating from 1976, is included within the protected surroundings of the historic ensemble of Port Bo.
Nature
El Golfet beach is a small natural cove in Calella de Palafrugell, wedged into the rocky stretch where the Espai Natural Protegit de Castell-Cap Roig begins, next to the castle and the Jardí Botànic de Cap Roig. Facing east and flanked by the Forcats point and Cap Roig, it is 75 metres long and 17 metres wide, of coarse sand with a steep entry into the water, and is reached on foot by stairs or by the coastal path; it has no services at all. Until the 1960s it could only be reached by sea, since it was a cliff of fallen rocks; it was then that a local businessman obtained permission to dump sand there and, with the help of storms, form the present-day beach. It used to be known as Cau Toixó, because of the presence of badgers.
Nature
Cala Pedrosa is a small natural beach in Palafrugell located on a stretch of cliff-lined coast, between the towns of Tamariu and Llafranc. At barely 33 metres long and 40 metres wide, it is made up of coarse sand, gravel and pebbles, which explains its name. In one corner, two old fishermen's huts are preserved, one of them now converted into a small restaurant. It is reached on foot along the coastal path, about two kilometres from Tamariu beach, or by a trail that starts from the stream next to the road from Palafrugell to Tamariu, at about 90 metres above sea level, through a damp, leafy hollow of holm oaks, wild cherry trees and ivy. Near the beach there is a spring, today almost lost.
Nature
Cala Aiguadolça, or cala d'Aigua Dolça, is a small natural cove located in the bay of Tamariu, in the municipality of Palafrugell (Baix Empordà), very close to the village of Tamariu, reached by the coastal path. It is barely 22 metres long with an average width of 8 metres, with golden-coloured shingle, a south-west orientation and surroundings ringed by pine trees. Its name comes from a freshwater spring, now gone, that once existed on the beach itself.
Activity
Weekly market selling food and other goods in the centre of Palafrugell.
Activity
The town's main festival in honour of Santa Margarida, patron saint of the municipality, with concerts, popular events and sardana dancing. It is held in the week of 20 July, a date that recalls a historical episode: in 1638 the residents of Palafrugell rose up against the Spanish troops quartered in the town, an event some historians consider a precursor of the Guerra dels Segadors (Reapers' War).
Monument
The Museu del Suro (Cork Museum) of Palafrugell was founded in 1972 by the Girona archaeologist Miquel Oliva together with local researchers Joan Badia and Albert Recasens, with the mission of preserving and interpreting the heritage linked to the world of cork in Catalonia. Its first collections, drawn from archaeological surveys and ethnographic material, were displayed at the Casa de la Cultura Josep Pla; in 1987 the museum moved to the former Popular Library and School of Arts and Crafts on Carrer de la Tarongeta, where in 1991 it opened its first permanent exhibition spaces. On 29 June 2012 it opened its current premises in the former modernist cork factory of Can Mario, becoming the largest museum in the world devoted to this material.
Curiosity
The Sant Sebastià lighthouse, opened in 1857, is the most powerful on the Catalan coast, with a range of 32 nautical miles, and crowns the mountain of Sa Guarda, in Palafrugell (Baix Empordà, Girona), above the cliffs that form the cap de Sant Sebastià, one of the finest viewpoints on the Costa Brava. It is part of the monumental complex of Sant Sebastià de la Guarda, evidence of more than 2,600 years of occupation: next to the lighthouse stand the remains of an Iberian settlement from the 6th-1st centuries BC, with excavated houses and streets, a 15th-century watchtower built from 1445 against piracy, and an 18th-century hermitage and guesthouse. The complex is managed by the Museu del Suro of Palafrugell.
Monument
Hermitage of Santa Margarida de Vilarnau, patron saint of Palafrugell, located in the small hamlet of Santa Margarida, within the municipality, in the Baix Empordà. It is a small Romanesque-style church that forms part of the region's notable ensemble of rural Romanesque architecture. The settlement around it was already a small hamlet in the 19th century: the 1860 gazetteer recorded sixteen houses there, fifteen of them inhabited.
Historical milestone
On 8 March 1897 Josep Pla i Casadevall was born in Palafrugell, a writer and journalist in Catalan and Spanish who turned the Empordanet into literary material. His body of work, spanning six uninterrupted decades and totaling more than thirty thousand pages gathered in thirty-eight volumes of complete works, was essential to the modernization of the Catalan language and to spreading knowledge of local customs and traditions. His opinion pieces, journalistic chronicles and social reports from numerous countries, written as a correspondent across much of Europe, also stand as a unique testimony to twentieth-century history, which has established him as the most important prose writer of contemporary Catalan literature. He died at the mas de Llofriu on 23 April 1981.
Food and drink
A winter stew originating in Palafrugell, born in the 19th century as a Lenten dish with cod tripe, hard-boiled egg, dried fish and potato, with no meat in its original form; over time fishermen added cuttlefish to it, and cork workers rounded it out with game birds and even sausages. Crews of cork workers from Palafrugell used to eat it every Monday in the barraca; its slow and laborious preparation means it rarely appears on restaurant menus and usually has to be ordered in advance. Since 1997 the Institut de Promoció Econòmica de Palafrugell has organized gastronomic days dedicated to promoting it; the writer Josep Pla mentions it in his diary La vida lenta.
Food and drink
Sea urchins gathered on the rocks of the coast and eaten raw, opened in half and accompanied by toasted bread and white wine; their winter season gives rise to the garoinades, deeply rooted communal meals.