Village
Blanes is a coastal town in the Selva comarca, in Girona, on the Mediterranean at the point where the Costa Brava begins, which is why it is known as its 'Gateway'. In Roman times it was called Blanda. It has 42,699 inhabitants (INE 2025), a fishing port and an extensive coastline of coves, including Cala Sa Forcanera and Cala de Sant Francesc or Cala Bona. The islet of Sa Palomera, joined to the mainland, marks the start of the Costa Brava heading north, with the Portal de la Costa Brava monument. It preserves the Marimurtra botanical gardens, created in 1921 by the German industrialist Karl Faust, and those of Pinya de Rosa, reached by the carrilet tourist train. Also notable are the hermitage of l'Antiga, that of la Salut and the church of Santa Maria.
Monument
The Palau Vescomtal of the Cabrera family, next to the church of Santa Maria de Blanes, is a Gothic palace recovered by the viscounts in 1381 and the work of the architect Arnau Bargués; now much in ruins, it retains the west façade with a round-arched portal and two trilobed windows. It was blown up by French troops in 1694 and has been an Asset of National Cultural Interest since 1949 (BCIN 552-MH).
Monument
The hermitage and tower of Santa Bàrbara form a group situated on the summit of a hill with great visibility over the coast, next to the castle of Sant Joan, at 148 metres above sea level. The tower, circular in plan and with two floors, one of whose three windows is Gothic in style, was used above all in the 15th and 16th centuries as a watchtower: from its bell tower the inhabitants of Blanes were alerted to the presence of enemy ships. Attached to it stand the hermitage, dedicated to the saint, rectangular in plan with a semicircular apse and a façade with a voussoired round arch, and the hermit's house, in charge of tending the surrounding land and woods. Rebuilt between 1980 and 1982 after years of neglect, the group has inspired writers such as Joaquim Ruyra.
Monument
The Jardí Botànic Marimurtra, on the cliffs of Blanes, is a historic garden declared a Bien Cultural de Interés Nacional (Catalonia's highest level of heritage protection), famed for its abundance of cacti and Mediterranean vegetation; its name alludes to the aim of combining several ecosystems in the same space. It was founded in 1921 by the German industrialist Carl Faust i Schmidt, who had been buying land in Blanes since 1918 and who, helped by the botanist Pius Font i Quer, devoted much of his life to acclimatising exotic plants from the five continents. Of its 11.5 hectares, four make up the visitable route, with three gardens — subtropical, temperate and Mediterranean — and some 2750 species, with viewpoints such as the one dedicated to Linnaeus. Since 1951 it has been managed by the Fundació Privada Carl Faust, and it is one of only two botanical gardens in Catalonia.
Nature
The cala de Sant Francesc, also called cala Bona, is the second-largest beach in Blanes, after the cala de Sa Forcanera, and lies between two stretches of cliff at the foot of the development that bears its name, two kilometres from the centre of the village. It is 178 metres long and 31 metres wide on average, with coarse sand and gravel and a steeply sloping entry into the water. It can be reached along the coastal path, both from the Jardí Botànic Marimurtra and from the castle of Sant Joan, and it has showers, parking and a beach bar. Near the beach stands the small hermitage of Sant Francesc, which gives its name to both the cove and the development. Its waters, awarded the Blue Flag, undergo a weekly quality check that rates them excellent.
Activity
Main festival of Blanes (la Selva, Girona), which falls in the last week of July, coinciding with the feast of Saint Anne and Saint Joachim, and lasts eight days with popular and cultural programming. Its hallmark is the Costa Brava International Fireworks Competition, held every year during that week and considered one of the most important pyrotechnic contests in Europe. In mid-August the Festa Major Petita is also held, in honour of the co-patrons Saint Bonós and Saint Maximiano, with cultural activities among which the Caminada Popular Nit de Sant Bonós stands out, an 8-kilometre night march with more than 25 years of history.
Monument
The font gòtica de Blanes, in the carrer Ample, is considered the best-preserved fountain of Catalan Gothic architecture. It has an octagonal plan and consists of three levels: a lower one, on which the basin rests; a central one, with the spouts; and an upper one, decorated with animal motifs and heraldic medallions of the Cabrera family, as well as a relief loom suggesting the involvement of the local textile guild in its construction. The whole is crowned by a pyramidal roof with gargoyles of animal and human subjects and Gothic tracery with pinnacles, topped by the figure of an angel now missing its arms. It was built around 1438 on the initiative of Countess Violant de Prades, wife of Bernat de Cabrera, in a context of reinforcing the town's walls with defensive towers -of which the Verge Maria gate survives-, and as a response to the problems of unsanitary conditions suffered by Blanes in the late Middle Ages.
Historical milestone
The German industrialist Carl Faust began planting, in the 1920s, on the cliffs of Blanes, the collections of Mediterranean, subtropical and temperate flora he assembled together with the botanist Pius Font i Quer. The garden, covering about 16 hectares with magnificent views over the Mediterranean Sea, takes its name from the combination of these ecosystems ('mar', sea, and 'murtra', myrtle). It is today considered the finest Mediterranean botanical garden in Europe, a member of the international organization BGCI and of the Ibero-Macaronesian Association of Botanical Gardens, with the international code BLAN. In 1995 it was declared a cultural asset of national interest, in the category of historic garden.
Food and drink
The trawler and small-scale fishing fleet of Blanes, known as the Gateway to the Costa Brava for opening up this coastline from the south, lands prawns, Norway lobster, monkfish, rockfish and small mixed fish at the port, auctioned every afternoon at the town's fish market. The current facility replaced the old Llotja Vella del Peix, a building from the late 1930s with a gabled roof and brick arcades that served as fish market and warehouse until the 1970s, when a new fish market was set up, itself renovated in the 1990s.