by Josep Pla
Later on there were several campaigns to bring some of these articles up from the wreck, and many tons of items have been salvaged including excellent, though rusty, iron, as you’d expect of things manufactured during the much-vaunted reign of “glorious” Queen Victoria.
* * *
—
The downpours that usually accompany squalls from the east are never preceded by electric storms, by the crackle of thunder and lightning. The huge rainfalls brought on by autumnal and wintry southwesterly gales, on monotonous, depressing afternoons, do, on the other hand, generally provide spectacular electric fireworks. Downpours from the east are a dirty yellow, seem passive and resigned; southwesterly squalls are porous and bluey-white, and they create strikingly active haze. Downpours from the east move, pass by and flee; those from the southwest are static and fall by virtue of their mathematical verticality. On land and sea, they hurl down large bluish bubbles that bounce off roofs, hop over stones, in an intense, cosmic, stupefied, momentary show of strength.
On the night of the sinking of the Tregastel, a French steamship that lies off Bona Cove in Mar d’Avall, a malign southwesterly was blowing – it was raining cats and dogs and was frightening and foul, with nil visibility.
The first news of the sinking of the Tregastel reached Cadaqués when a life jacket that bore the ship’s name was found in the sea. Later, news came of survivors from the wreck reaching the Cape Creus lighthouse and even remoter spots on the peninsula. The appearance of hirsute, desolate, bedraggled men caused more fear than joy. A lifeboat was also discovered in Guillola Bay and another in an unlikely place at La Pelosa on the Roses coast. The two boats were clearly part of the Tregastel’s life-saving equipment.
Only the vaguest of conjectures exist as to why the shipwreck happened. Only one thing is really certain: on the night of the catastrophe, the lights were out, because the country was engaged in a civil war, and as a result of the likelihood of aerial bombing raids, use of the lights had been suspended. Today that might seem incredible, but the lights were switched off. The Cape Creus lighthouse had been hit by a bomb, and so it too was in darkness.
The vessel, registered with a tonnage of 1,800, was coming from North Africa and was empty, carrying only ballast. She was heading – or so the circumstances of her sinking would indicate – somewhere on the western coast of the Gulf of Lion, most probably to Port-Vendres. If she had been intending to go to a port farther into the body of the gulf, she wouldn’t have come so close to land. Even though visibility was extremely poor, because the lighthouses weren’t up and running, we can ascertain this much. In a word, the Tregastel at some point in time turned toward Cape Béar, thinking she had negotiated Cape Creus; in reality, however, when she began that turn, she hadn’t yet rounded the cape. That error inevitably guided her onto the rocks. She got it wrong by only two or three miles – nothing more. The rudder turned a quarter of an hour too soon.
According to the stories, the Tregastel’s first collision with rocks was on the island of Messina, which is outside and to the east of Cadaqués Bay. It must have been a hellish, lightning crash. She was brought aground by the collision, but she must have been left in such a precarious, listless state that she no longer had the strength to head back out into deeper water. As the rain poured down, one imagines the boat shuddered tragically.
Apart from that first disastrous incident everything else is conjecture that can’t be clarified. The small island of Messina is rocky but has no esculls, niells or baus. The wind and sea must have pushed the steamship off the rocks, and rudderless, damaged by the collision and leaking, the Tregastel must have been dragged toward the coast by the sirocco.
On that path to perdition, those on board must have had a sure, if imprecise, sense of the approaching coast – no doubt because of the roiling sea. It is a fact, revealed by later underwater reconnaissance, that the Tregastel at some point cast out her anchors. The steamship lies outside Bona Cove, her prow upturned and her stern seated on the sea’s sloping underwater plain. The Tregastel’s strange position, incongruous with the regular gusts of the sirocco in Bona Cove, can partially be explained by the decision to cast the anchors once the vessel was already on the rocks. But that’s another ex post facto explanation, and such conjectures are but empty blather when it comes to the sea. There are at least two extenuating circumstances explaining why the Tregastel anchored too late: the anchor ropes may have snapped, or the steamship might have reached the coast so submerged in the sea, with so much water in her bilge, that anchoring her was seen as a lesser evil, aimed at stabilizing the wreck rather than helping to save the vessel.
At this point, people must have begun to scatter. The two lifeboats were lowered into the sea, and the crew swarmed into them. Neither of the boats tried to reach the coast that was right in front of their noses, a few yards away. The sound of the sea on the rocks must have led them to think it was a rough, dangerous coast. But in that kind of boat, a more feasible spot for them to reach would have been Bona Cove or – even more feasible, given the weather – Jugadora Cove, which they could have quickly reached. Not knowing the lay of the land, unable to see a thing, they fled far from their safest options.
Those wretched folk started to row against wind and sea. Given the implacable blasts of the sirocco – it was a proper sea storm – it is easy to imagine the efforts they had to make. Life, however, feels much more valuable when its loss is imminent. One of the boats had less nerve than the other. Those aboard this boat no doubt reached Guillola Bay. It seems likely that when they found themselves sheltered from the sea’s onslaught, they decided it was a suitable place to disembark. They landed and, stripped of everything that could have satisfied their most elemental needs, they decided to divide into search parties. One group groped its way across terrain difficult even for people who know the area and reached the Cape Creus lighthouse many hours later. Some were lost in the mountains and finally found remote farmhouses in the hinterland.
The other lifeboat showed remarkable prowess, given the weather and the effort required to win out. They rowed against a relentless sea and gusting wind and covered over four miles to reach La Pelosa, a beach on the Roses coast, between Norfeu and Montjoi. The boat foundered on the beach, and the crew abandoned it and scattered inland.
After a few days and countless difficulties – it being the middle of the civil war – the crew members gathered together in Roses and were finally repatriated.
Ever since the winter of 1937, the Tregastel has lain at the bottom of the sea in Bona Cove. So far it has not been touched by a soul, although the wreck has been recced. Its sacking has been delayed time and again because the hulk sparked a degree of diplomatic activity between Spain and France. The French owners believe themselves still in possession of rights to the contents of the wreck and wish to participate in the salvaging of the submerged scrap iron. As a result, the wreck is subject to litigation.
Even though her location is relatively shallow – the prow is thirty or so yards under water and the stern twenty or so – there is no danger that the sea will break her up. She’s in deep enough that the waves and sea swells can’t reach her. Over time, mineral chemical reactions, the activity of maritime flora and fauna, could devour the vessel. Destruction by some mechanical means, on the other hand, is unlikely.
Two or three yards beneath the sea’s surface movements, immense tranquility reigns; it is a static, motionless place. As depth increases, the chill grows and the light dims. There is only one phenomenon that can disrupt this stasis: underwater currents, which are stronger or weaker depending on location. The depths of the sea become more or less murky depending on the direction of these currents. The Tregastel is too close to the coastline for sea currents to affect the area where she is submerged. It would be another matter if she were in the area of the currents from Cape Creus, which are, as pointed out in Nautical Instructions and demonstrated in daily reality, very strong. The
hulk is but a shadow – there are only shadows at the bottom of the sea – located in still waters, enjoying a silent, deathly peace.
THE SINKING OF THE CALA GALIOTA:
Conversations with Dalí The Painter’s Father
The motor-powered schooner Cala Galiota, registered in Palma, Majorca, and owned by La Naviera Mallorquina SA, weighing one hundred twenty tons, with a crew of seven, went down on 3 December 1946, when it was making the crossing – without cargo, but with proper ballast – from Barcelona to Palma. When the news reached Cadaqués quite a few days later, people were shocked because its boatswain, Ferran Ribera Dalmau, hailed from there. As I was living in Cadaqués at the time, I experienced this sense of shock firsthand. There was a similar emotional reaction in Palafrugell, where the Ribera family had lived and was well liked. The sinking of the schooner made me personally very depressed, not only because it affected the two towns to which I was most attached at the time – Cadaqués, where I was living, and Palafrugell, my birthplace – but also because her sinking was dramatic and strange in the extreme. Everything was lost when she went down: the whole crew and the whole boat. Not a single trace of the Cala Galiota has ever been found: not a piece of timber, a remnant of sail, rope or tiniest item. Nothing at all. Everything went down to the bottom of the sea and left not the slightest trace. That means – as I see it – that people haven’t a clue about why she was wrecked: not the causes, not the mechanics, not a single detail. We haven’t a scrap of information, and that has led to a huge amount of conjecture. People like to imagine, which is very easy! The event was blown up out of proportion, because the schooner was following a route where there was a lot of traffic, night and day: Barcelona to Palma via Sa Dragonera.
* * *
—
After living in L’Escala for a few years, I decided I ought go to live in Cadaqués. I was intending to finish my Guidebook to the Costa Brava there. This was a commission from a publishing house, like most of what I’ve written. I described the central part of the coast in the house I rented in Fornells de Begur. Then I went to Tossa to write the southern section. Only the north remained to describe and I decided that Cadaqués would be the most suitable base. Senyor Tianet Rahola, the chemist in the El Poal neighborhood, rented me a house on La Riba, a wonderful house that had a balcony overlooking the bay, with views over the Pitxot establishment, El Llaner, El Baluard and the church, which were a constant source of fascination. I spent several days on that balcony in a state of deep contemplation. By dint of so much contemplation, I realized I was becoming wiser rather than richer by the day, and much to my regret, I had to relent. Life was good in Cadaqués. There were a few local tourists in summer. In other months, there was just the presence of the town and a wonderful sense of solitude and remoteness. The fish was delicious, the olive oil, anchovies, bread, wine, crustaceans and mussels, unrivaled. The northern gales blew, sometimes you couldn’t even walk out in them; the climate was dry and seemed to have been made expressly for my metabolism. The geology was dark, Pyrenean and mysterious, and the wind made the olive groves glitter with silvery foam. It was a delightful place to live off your investments, to do nothing but contemplate land and sea. On the other hand, I myself had to do something to make ends meet. So I had to reduce my hours of contemplation, or at least change them. Living off investments was far out of my reach. A real shame.
At the time Senyor Rahola, a fine gentleman, helped me enormously. He lent me books, introduced me to his friends and relatives, invited me into the Casino, which had few members, but possessed a solitary corner, a library I found very useful. I located there the speech made by Frederic Rahola i Trémols on his entry into the Academy of Fine Literature in Barcelona, a document that is little known but unsurpassed in its account of medieval and eighteenth-century Cadaqués. I also found a few histories of Sant Pere de Roda and the land that was controlled by the great Benedictine monastery, material on the past of Roses, whose fascinating history has yet to be written, on the Treaty of the Pyrenees, etc. There was a lot to enable me to start on the last part of my Guidebook to the Costa Brava, scattered over a landscape that has been so devastated. I had secured the means to live in Cadaqués for a long stretch of time. I didn’t regret my decision. Cadaqués was a pure delight at the time. Today there is a constant hullabaloo that is intolerable: when so many artists and their respective spouses gather in a town, with the confusion inherent in the species and the music that comes in tow, the results come straight out of the most overbearing literary fiction.
One winter’s day in 1947, when the north wind was blowing and there was a clear sky and a diamond-bright sun, I went for an after-lunch stroll along La Riba, which is a very sheltered promenade. I had the pleasure of bumping into the rector of Cadaqués, a gentleman who was beginning to age and who, at that time of day, used to walk to the Oliveres beach, following the sheltered path around the bay.
“Are you doing anything in particular?” he asked immediately.
“No, nothing at all, senyor.”
“Come with me for a while and I’ll tell you something I’ve been charged to tell you. This will save me having to knock on your door and waste your time. Three or four days ago Senyor Dalí begged me to tell you to go see him at home because he has something he wants to tell you. Senyor Dalí lives on the other side of town, in El Llaner, and it’s probably easier for you to go to his place than for him to come to yours. Senyor Dalí is getting on in years and doesn’t usually budge from his home in winter.”
I must have looked astonished. The rector reacted with a laugh: “Naturally you must think it odd I refer to Senyor Dalí the notary in these terms. You must think it odd that a priest like myself is speaking to you about Senyor Dalí…”
“Indeed I am.”
“Well, it’s not odd at all. Senyor Dalí nowadays is a very different man from the man he was years ago with that reputation he enjoyed in so many quarters. The revolution and war we suffered have quite subdued him. Senyor Dalí is no longer the anticleric he once was and is probably not even a republican. Today he is one of the most practicing Catholics in this parish, an exemplary Catholic.”
“Now I understand! You must forgive my total ignorance of these matters.”
“That’s all right, senyor. Times have been trying and individuals have taken strange paths. Do you know Senyor Dalí?”
“Not very well, but obviously everyone knows everyone to an extent in the Ampurdan. He’s a well-known, popular figure. He’s made an intellectual and political impact well beyond notary circles.” “Absolutely. Senyor Dalí is a formidable character. He’s retired from the notary world now. He has come to live in Cadaqués, after being the most senior notary in the regional college. He is a remarkable man and held in high regard. I often see him. I drop by. We talk, often at length. He’s an impulsive, edgy individual and hates to be inactive. There are few like him in our country.”
“The Dalís from the Figueres branch of the family are very unusual.”
“It’s a family that comes from Llers…” the rector says, smiling pleasantly.
“They might also be Irish. The surname Dalí makes one think of the Irish Ó Dálaigh. There have been many people with Gaelic, Scottish or Irish names in Spain. These adventurers have made little impact with the exception of General O’Donnell, whom Senyor Mañé i Flaquer held in such high esteem. When General O’Donnell led the Liberal Union Party, they built lots of roads and lighthouses – in the reign of Donya Isabel II.”
We’d reached the corner of the street to go onto the Oliveres beach. The churchman stopped and said: “The north wind is really gusting. It seems to have ratcheted up. At my age…If you don’t mind, we’ll retrace our steps.”
“Whatever you’d like…”
While we walked back, I asked the rector if he knew why exactly Senyor Dalí wanted to me to pay him a visit.
“Senyor Dalí right now is very much preoccup
ied by the sinking of the Cala Galiota. He has taken it to heart and wants to get the business resolved. He says it’s taking too long. One of the victims is from Cadaqués, Ferran Ribera. He wants to clear up some doubts he has. I think he wants to ask you about something related to the press and the ship going down.”
“If you see him before I do, please tell him that I will do anything he asks if I can, although I can’t guarantee any outcome. Over three months have passed since the Cala Galiota was lost and nothing has been decided in relation to the men who went down. I can understand why Senyor Dalí is up in arms. Everybody is.”