There is a particular quality to the Mediterranean light in July — not the blinding white of midday, but the amber warmth that settles over old stone walls in the hours before sunset. In Cartagena, it turns the Roman amphitheatre into something almost unbearably beautiful.
Read the full essay →The prawn boats go out before dawn. By the time the market opens, the catch has already been sorted, weighed, and argued over. A morning spent watching this ritual reveals something about how a coastal economy actually works — and how much of it has already been lost.
Long before the Romans arrived, Phoenician traders had mapped the coastline from Tyre to Cádiz. The ports they founded still exist — sometimes under different names, sometimes barely changed at all. A journey through their legacy.
Driving the old coastal road rather than the motorway takes twice as long and reveals a version of the coast that the guidebooks have mostly stopped mentioning. Villages that tourism forgot, or perhaps chose to forget.
The modernista movement left its mark far beyond the Eixample. In small market towns across Valencia and Murcia, ornate facades survive in various states of repair — some restored, many not.