Route: Tourism in the Central Costa Brava

The topography of the Costa Brava and the difficult access via train hindered the establishment of large tourist complexes in the early 20th century, which delayed the area’s popularity. With the arrival of mass tourism starting in the 1960s, the Costa Brava underwent an intense transformation. The areas around its picturesque fishing villages served as a territory for experimentation where two opposing city models converged: the garden city and collective housing. Mass tourism on the Costa Brava began simultaneously with several different focal points. One of the first large operations was developed by the architect and businessman Josep Maria Bosch i Aymerich who built a large tourist complex in Begur with gardens by Rubió i Tudurí, the Cap Sa Sal hotel. Other notable constructions include a series of luxury villas built in places that would be unthinkable today as well as large developments in towns in the interior, in particular the ones by Josep Pratmarsó.