Destination La Barrosa Beach

March 27 – 2024 –  7 min

There are as many trips as there are destinations and the destination is not always the precise point on a map. Sometimes the journey consists of going around the map, sometimes it is a journey of initiation, inward; others, a return like Ulysses and, even so, the journey always marks the beginning of a story that is still unknown and, as here, one does not know the exact place where the horizon line is water or sky or where the Mediterranean ends and the Atlantic ocean begins because from the shore it is easy to lose orientation before the immensity of the blue landscape that divides two continents, with Africa on the other side so close that one can guess the same pigments and some of the unanswered questions of Miquel Barceló’s travel notebooks that invite the traveler to wander, to question and to discover himself between the white pages of his own notebook.

In ancient times, it was a Phoenician settlement and the place chosen to erect the Temple of Melkart, a sanctuary in honor of the God of Commerce that, according to classical historiographic sources, was visited by the emperor Julius Caesar where he had a premonitory dream of conquering the world after weeping before the sculpture of Alexander the Great for having reached his age without achieving success. 

The fishing origin of the village of Sancti Petri is still alive and explains its name, which comes from the Latin expression meaning «of San Pedro», patron saint of fishermen who work here, from spring to July, fishing for bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus) in the sea off the coast of Cádiz, who have made of the almadraba not only identity and culture, but also a unique art. In May, since 2,000 years ago, the first tunas are advancing from the North along the Cadiz coast towards the Mediterranean Sea looking for warmer waters to spawn and that is when the master sailors of Zahara, Barbate, Tarifa, Conil and Chiclana de la Frontera begin the work of their traditional and sustainable fishing, tracing the same route that is a feast of gastronomy and flavor. The name “almadraba” means «place of struggle» and this millenary fishing technique, initiated by the Phoenicians, recreates this space in the waters of the sea by means of a labyrinthine network of nets and anchors.  The «melee» between sailors and the immense tuna can be witnessed live from nearby boats, although there are many other ways to participate in the Almadraba, visiting the auctions in the port auctions or the Almadraba Tuna Museum in Conil, a center of interpretation and documentation located in an old canning factory. During the months of May and June, in the villages of the Cadiz coast that make up the Almadraba route, gastronomic days of tuna are held, although throughout the year this species is worshipped by turning any part of its anatomy into the protagonist of true culinary delicacies cooked in all kinds of ways, whether the traditional onions and in the oven «a la sal» or in avant-garde evolutions of oriental fusion such as marinated bluefin tuna tacos, very close to Japanese sushi.

Between lunch and dinner with tuna and other delicacies of this land, happens the sunset, a magical moment full of beauty on the beach of La Barrosa. The sun descends behind the islet of the unmistakable contours that draw the silhouette of the Castle of Sancti Petri, built on the foundations of the Shrine of Melkart worshiped by Phoenicians and Carthaginians and, later, the Temple of Hercules Gaditano, founded founded around 1,100 B.C. during the Roman domination, about eighty years after the Trojan War. The classical historian Pomponius Mela claimed that the remains of Hercules were buried in this Temple and that the interior of its walls contained the Pygmalion tree. Classical sources narrate that numerous sailors and famous people visited the Temple of Hercules in Gaditano where, according to Titus Livy, Hannibal offered his vows before leaving for the Italian peninsula to undertake his conquest. The Temple reached its maximum splendor during the time of Emperor Trajan, preserving some archaeological remains in the Museum of Cadiz, would lose all the greatness that accumulated in the past during the Visigothic domination and would finally be destroyed in the Almoravid invasions. The current Sancti Petri Castle would be built again, between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, for military defense purposes. In 1918, the lighthouse was erected so that the islet acted as a landfall to enter the marina in the Sancti Petri channel. 

As the sun descends over the horizon, the telluric forces of this place seem to emerge to connect with the navigator, the traveler, the wayfarer. They say that from space the sun is white. On this beach, when it begins its descent due to the effect of the earth’s rotation, it is an intense orange and that special luminosity of golden hues envelops the landscape at sunset, enhancing the mysticism of the phenomenon and its symbolism of transience and transcendence.            

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