Savoring a Vintage Spanish Port : On the Costa Brava, the Little Fishing Village of Cadaques Charmed Dali, Miro and Picasso. Happily, It’s Still 80 Years Off the Beaten Path

CADAQUES, Spain —  Antonio is a fishing boat, a very old thing of the sea with a rusted donkey engine that clanks and spits but probably will outlive us all.

Painted a hundred times, mint green and white over splintered gunwales, the whaler comes back to Cadaques a little after dawn each morning except Sunday. Antonio is the local wakeup call. It also is a village fishmonger bringing lunch and dinner to restaurants and hotels and shellfish for the family paella .

I do not ask the name of the lone man at Antonio’s wooden tiller. Nor that of the woman who has waited on the jetty and hidden from the dawn wind inside a telephone booth. To ask would make them aware of a watcher and that would hurt the moment.

So, unaware, they work over the inside of the boat on the horseshoe beach and tug flatfish, codfish, spiny fish, anchovies and squid from the net. He sorts the catch and plucks inky glands from the squid. She arranges the fish in flat baskets, covers them with hessian and folds the net into a neat pile for tomorrow’s work.

Then she carries baskets and a steelyard scale to town and her daily spot in a cobbled courtyard. She has the tiny triumph of being first to set up shop because Antonio was first back to the beach. The other boats--Manuel, Eduardo, Cucurucuc and Carmen--are still at sea and somewhere behind Cape Cross. Cabo de Creus .

Further around the arm of the bay, closer to town, an espresso machine begins hissing and home-fried churros are sugared at Bar Meliton.

Tap. Tap. Tap. A sign is tacked to a post. It says the Vilajuiga soccer team will play Cadaques this weekend for the campionet tercera division juvinil .

Clatter. Local pottery--hand-painted tureens and enormous servers--is being stacked for display outside Ceramicas Artesanas.

A huge and weary German shepherd lumbers towards the beach, looking for people and ready to answer to whatever name sounds friendly.

Cadaques is awake.

Cadaques (pronounce it KAH-dah-kez) was the final stop on our looping wander of Spain, pinpointed for no better reason than the village neatly completed the circle hooking back to Madrid.

We (author accompanied by covivant ) really knew nothing about the place.

An acquaintance had mentioned it, but following the vacation recommendations of acquaintances is not something I recommend.

Robert Kane in “Spain at its Best” blessed Cadaques as his favorite Costa Brava town. He then promptly kissed the place off in 38 words.

Or was Kane keeping it to himself?

Makes sense. Because Salvador Dali painted here, was born near here (in Figueras), died near here (at Port Lligat) and built a museum near here (also in Figueras). And artists do not choose to live and create in unpleasant surroundings.

Picasso and Miro often kept Dali company. They also worked here. Neither (with the possible exception of Picasso and his screaming portrait of Guernica) is remembered for painting ugly towns.

So, last spring, we decided to cap Spain with Cadaques.

Spain--even with the peseta dropped 10% against the dismal dollar in the past year--remains one of Europe’s more affordable destinations. Especially in the off-season.

In fall or spring, two-star tourists can still find hotels where a comfortable night for two costs less than $60. Dining--if the preference be paella , perdiz (partridge), lenguado (sole) or other regional passions--is no more expensive than eating good family Thai, Mexican or Italian in Los Angeles. And auto rentals probably are cheaper than any spot in the world.

Hertz, as part of its off-season “World on Wheels” program this fall, is renting econoboxes, with advance reservation and payment requirements, for $182 a week. With unlimited mileage, and including insurance.

So we picked up our Hertzmobile (politely upgraded owing to a reservations glitch) at the Madrid airport and drove forth to attach substance to windmills and realize our castles in Spain.

Madrid. The olive, anchovy, squid and pickled pepper tapas remain the best reason beyond Spanish sherry for bar hopping the 17th-Century Plaza Mayor. Then to Botin’s for sangria and a suckling pig supper to join the 29 million tourists who have followed Hemingway here. Tomorrow in daylight will do well enough for the Royal Palace, flea markets and the Prado--and wincing at Picasso’s powerful “Guernica.”

Toledo. The Moors made it of tall, flat-faced buildings without windows and cobbled alleys serving as Main Street, and their twisting, towering medieval town became a national monument. The rich clash of Toledo steel has been heard worldwide for centuries; the industry continues and is fronted by a thousand souvenir shops selling fine blades. But we do wish they’d stop making Gestapo dress daggers.

Granada. Forward to the perfectly preserved past of Andalusia and Arabian Nights--all inside the turreted walls of the Alhambra, where caliphs and kings gathered their villages, loves, lives and history. Only silent now.

Valencia. The world’s finest paella is made with snails, string beans and artichokes and can be ordered at Alcazar at No. 12, Calle Mosen Fermades. But first (because you will have difficulty walking after such a meal) visit Museo Nacional de Ceramica and several incredible centuries of magnificent Spanish ceramics.

Barcelona. Picasso’s hometown from the age of 14, now the city of his museum. It’s a 1,000-item collection to broaden those who have never seen Picasso as an engraver, ceramicist, textile designer and painter of still life.

And then came Cadaques.

It did not come easily.

Although well-established since the ‘50s as a colony for painters, writers, thinkers, players of obscure musical instruments and tourists anxious to putter among culturists, Cadaques has remained modestly remote by retaining its inaccessibility.

Twenty-five miles south of the French border, well hidden among the forgotten harbors and unknown capes of northeast Spain, the village is about 80 years off the beaten path. Cruise boats cannot dock here. There is no airport. The closest railroad station is 20 miles west.

The only way in is by road. Even that is a 15-mile rally course across a sierra requiring equal doses of courage and Dramamine. Up among almond groves. Down through olive trees. But also around some of the prettiest coastal scenery of the vaunted Costa Brava.

But as the road wriggles and descends towards the coast, Cadaques appears and nothing should be this cute.

Its little homes are whitewashed and lean against each other for comfort. Rooftops are blue slate or reddish tile and the materials are local. There are 1,100 people living in town and at any one time you might see nine of them.

It is the Carmel of the Costa Brava and Spain’s answer to St. Tropez and a superb argument for early retirement.

Unless you’re in search of a hostel, there really are only two hotels in Cadaques. The rest are at least a kilometer or three away from the coast. At these off-season prices we can afford much better.

So there’s Hotel Llane Petit--cozy, moderate and two-storied on its own beach. Depending on the dollar--in turn, dependent on the mood and length of Saddam Hussein’s current vacation in Kuwait--you will pay about $55 a night for two at the pleasant Petit.

Or there’s the Playa Sol.

It is three-star, a definite breach of our traveling practice, but we relented because of the hotel. It’s on a small beach and a tiny bay. Our room was on the third floor, complete with French doors and a veranda fully facing one of the better seascapes in Cadaques.

We happily paid what now would be about $75 a night for two.

There is nothing to do in Cadaques. Thank heavens.

No casino. No large restaurants. No brazen boutiques. No real souvenirs beyond the absolute treasures of tiny handicrafts, local ceramics and tipico fisherman’s sweaters.

There is sailing, sunning and diving, of course. But to find the lonelier beaches of Cape Cross, you must walk headland trails. There is a 16th-Century church rising above the village, but it has little regional significance.

And therein the drug of Cadaques.

It is one of the world’s dwindling number of genuine getaways that easily admit a visitor to a friendly community.

It takes only one early breakfast at Bar Meliton before the waiter is setting up a chocolate croissant and cafe con leche as you arrive for breakfast the second morning.

And the invitations from waitresses, hotel clerks and the woman in the sailing and dive shop are quite sincere.

There is to be a baking contest in the community hall and everybody in the village will come to judge the dishes and sample the winners and losers. . . .

In the square, there will be a festival where men buy roses for their ladies and ladies must buy a book for their men. . . .

Come cheer for Cadaques against Vilajuiga for the junior soccer championship. . . .

And to end this local celebration of St. George, there will be musicians, dancers and singers and a party for the children. While a dozen cooks use oars to stir a monster paella that will feed everyone who comes.

Dali, of course, cannot be ignored in Cadaques. His home stands and may be visited but not entered. The little bars where he drank and held audiences and listened to flamenco guitarists are well-marked by photographs of the visit.

But his entire presence can be found back across the sierra in Figueras and the Dali museum. It is a ludicrous, amusing, annoying, charming, tormented and genius-filled temple that sucks you into Dali’s games.

Look through this lens in one room. What actually is a sofa designed by Dali creates an image of Mae West’s lips.

Press this button. It rains inside a Cadillac mounted beneath a rowboat and the water sprays plants rooting in a mannequin’s lap. Visitors spend hours working this one out.

There is the brilliance of Dali, of course, in his seascapes of Cadaques and portraits of the women who held him.

It will be forever buried beneath his surrealism, eroticism and artistic experiments with limp watches, a lion eating a fried egg and wet cats frozen in photographic flight. Pity.

But we did not come to Costa Brava to contemplate this.

So back to Cadaques and a typical long, walking evening.

Breezes are from the bay and they are chilly enough for that new fisherman’s sweater. A Dubonnet for two at the first waterfront bar to be found better warms the moment.

Then it is a traditionally late-night dinner at Don Quijote, where the menu del dia is sole sauteed in white wine, garlic and butter. It is probably the best sole this side of Dover.

Soon it is way past midnight and there is nobody on the streets.

Beaches are dark, the harbor still.

There is just one noise. An old donkey engine fires as one old fisherman’s day begins and Antonio again heads out to sea.

As Cadaques sleeps.