Village
Sant Feliu de Guíxols is a city on the Costa Brava, in the Baix Empordà comarca, province of Girona, with 23,141 inhabitants, on the bay of the same name, between the hills of Sant Elm and Forques and surrounded by hills of pines, holm oaks and cork oaks. It is built around its former Benedictine monastery, constructed in 1723, whose restoration as a museum has been championed for decades by Carmen Cervera, who owns a villa in the town. It has a marina with 790 moorings, and until 1969 it had a narrow-gauge railway, dating from 1892, that connected it to Girona in almost two hours through the Aro valley. Today it is known for its lively seafront promenade and for the historic Festival de la Porta Ferrada, every summer.
Monument
An old Benedictine monastery of pre-Romanesque origin (10th century), with the Romanesque-style Porta Ferrada as its most emblematic feature, it is the historic and cultural centre of Sant Feliu de Guíxols. Its first floor today houses two exhibitions of the city's Museu d'Història: «Guíxols: eines i creences», devoted to the materials of the local Iberian settlement, and «El Monestir i la Vila», which traces the successive reforms of the monastic complex and its relationship with the city that has grown up around it.
Monument
The remains of the medieval wall of Sant Feliu de Guíxols (Girona), from the 14th to the 17th centuries, were part of the defensive enclosure of the town's monastery-fortress. Of that system there survive one of the access gates, the Arc de Sant Benet, as well as several towers, a patrol walkway, battlements and machicolations that protected the old centre.
Monument
The Casino la Constància, a historicist building of the late 19th century, built between 1888 and 1890 by the architect General Guitart i Lostaló and enlarged in 1899 and 1928 by Manuel Vega i March, is the headquarters of La Constància, a workers' society of Sant Feliu de Guíxols founded in 1851 and known as the «Casino dels Nois». Declared a Bien Cultural de Interés Nacional (Spain's highest level of heritage protection) in 1978, it is a trapezoidal building with three street façades, crowned at its corner by a circular gallery with three superimposed domes, of marked orientalist air: pointed horseshoe arches, a frieze of blind arcades, sgraffito work and lattice screens. With the rise of tourism its demolition was even considered to build a block of flats, but a citizens' commission managed to keep it intact; today it is the only nineteenth-century social building in the city that has survived whole to the present day.
Nature
Sant Pol beach is an urban beach in Sant Feliu de Guíxols, in the Baix Empordà, located in the cove of the same name, crescent-shaped and flanked by two pine-covered rocky headlands, the punta d'en Pau and the punta del Molar; its eastern end, known as Racó de s'Agaró, already belongs to the neighbouring municipality. It is about 665 metres long, with medium-grained, pinkish sand and a gentle entry into the water, and holds the Blue Flag for the quality of its waters. It is lined by a seafront promenade with modernista mansions, such as the Casa de les Punxes, and holds two singular spots: the fossil remains of an ancient coastline and those of a wooden ship sunk in the 1930s, as well as the dunes of Sant Pol, with a specific flora.
Nature
Cala del Vigatà lies at the foot of a cliff, beneath the development that surrounds the Sant Elm hermitage, at the far end of the seafront promenade of Sant Feliu de Guíxols. Facing south, it is 120 metres long with an average width of 9 metres, made up of large pebbles and rock blocks. It is reached by a steep, stepped path from the development, and preserves a spring, today abandoned; it is a beach where nudism is practised. Facing it stretches the most important Posidonia oceanica meadow in the municipality, which together with the Port Salvi area forms a marine environment of great natural value included in the Natura 2000 network.
Activity
Weekly market beside the passeig del Mar in Sant Feliu de Guíxols.
Activity
The Porta Ferrada International Festival is a music festival held every summer in Sant Feliu de Guíxols since the 1950s, making it the oldest in Catalonia. It owes its name to the fact that the first concerts, in 1957 and 1958, were held in front of the Porta Ferrada, in the Monestir square, a monument built between the 10th and 12th centuries. The first documented concert, in August 1958, brought together the South German Philharmonic Orchestra and its choir performing Beethoven and Mozart. In its early years the festival featured performers such as the Sant Feliu-born pianist Joan Padrosa and the Lluís Millet Chamber Orchestra, with works by Vivaldi, Bach and Falla. In 1982 it adopted its current name.
Activity
Main festival of Sant Feliu de Guíxols (Baix Empordà, Girona), the city's chief popular celebration, held around 1 August. It begins on 31 July with the traditional opening speech, usually given by a prominent local figure. One of the most eagerly awaited days is 3 August, with a correfoc that runs through the streets of the centre, and the festival closes around 4 August with a fireworks display. Its dates traditionally coincide with the Porta Ferrada International Festival, founded in 1958 and considered the oldest festival in Catalonia, devoted to theatre, music and dance, held in summer on stages such as the harbour, the monastery church and the city theatre.
Historical milestone
The thirty-nine-kilometer narrow-gauge railway promoted by Joan Casas i Arxer and Enric Heriz opened, carrying the cork and the fish inland; it ran until 1969 and is today a greenway.