Portbou is a border town in the most literal sense. It is wedged into a steep, rocky cove at the very end of the Costa Brava, a few hundred metres from France, with houses stacked up the hillside and a railway station so oversized that it looks like a cathedral beached by mistake. The station once handled all the rail traffic between Spain and France, where the track gauge changed, and passengers and goods were transferred between trains. Today the town has just fourteen hundred people and feels half-asleep, hushed by the wind and the sea.
The Tramontana, the cold north wind that whips down from the Pyrenees, can blow here with startling force, scouring the sky to a hard blue and making a loaded bike twitch on the exposed road. It is part of the character of the coast. Sheltered coves and stone-walled terraces of old vines run up the slope, and the sea below is a deep clear green. Across the border, Cerbère in France is only a few minutes away, and the two places share a long and sometimes dramatic history of smugglers and refugees.
Portbou has a haunting place in twentieth-century history. In September 1940, the German philosopher and critic Walter Benjamin, fleeing the Nazis and hoping to cross Spain to Portugal, died here, apparently by suicide, after being told he would be turned back. A memorial by the Israeli sculptor Dani Karavan, called Passages, descends in a steel tunnel through the cemetery cliff to a glass pane facing the sea, and it is a quietly moving place to stand for ten minutes. In 1939, thousands of Spanish Republican refugees streamed through the pass toward exile.
From here, the N-260 heads west along the southern foot of the Pyrenees, a long and unusually varied road that threads through the Empordà plain, the volcanic landscape of Garrotxa, the medieval town of Besalú, and over a number of passes in the Catalan Pyrenees. The first part is steep and winding, with views of the sea fading behind. Surfaces are generally good, but traffic and tight bends demand attention.
For fuel, Portbou is thin, so plan to fill up in Llançà or Figueres, and carry some cash. There are small bars and restaurants by the sea, where grilled fish, anchovies from nearby L'Escala and a glass of cold white wine are the standard order. Early morning has the best light on the water.