Canet de Mar

Where it sits. Canet de Mar is a town of roughly 14,500 people on the Maresme coast of Catalonia, 44 kilometres northeast of Barcelona, between Sant Pol de Mar and Arenys de Mar. It occupies the narrow shelf between the Serralada Litoral and the Mediterranean, with the coastal railway running along the back of the beach — a Catalan arrangement that visitors either find charming or find infuriating, depending on how they feel about a train passing every ten minutes between their towel and the promenade. The old centre is a block inland, built around the Riera Buscarons, a dry torrent bed that doubles as the town's main avenue and floods perhaps once a decade.

A town shaped by one architect. Canet's disproportionate architectural importance comes from a single family connection. Lluis Domenech i Montaner, the Modernista architect responsible for the Palau de la Musica Catalana and the Hospital de Sant Pau in Barcelona, had roots here through his mother and made Canet his working retreat. His house on Carrer Xamfra, the Casa Domenech, together with the adjoining Casa Rocosa, is now the Casa Museu Lluis Domenech i Montaner — his study, his drawing office and his archive of drawings and models preserved substantially as he left them at his death in 1923. It is the only museum in Catalonia dedicated to the architect, and it is unusually intimate: this is where the Palau's ceramic and stained-glass schemes were worked out on paper.

More Modernisme than a town this size should have. Domenech left a trail across Canet. The Casa Roura of 1892, on the Riera, is an early domestic work with a stepped gable and richly worked brick; the Ateneu Canetenc carries his hand; and the sanctuary of the Mare de Deu de la Misericordia, the town's patronal shrine on the hill above, received a marble and mosaic altar of his design. Beyond his own output, the town has the Santa Florentina castle in the valley behind it — an eleventh-century fortified farmhouse that he rebuilt between 1900 and 1908 into the neo-medieval pile that later served as Horn Hill, seat of House Tarly, in the sixth season of Game of Thrones. That castle is the reason most foreign visitors now arrive; the town itself is the reason to stay longer than the tour.

Beaches and the working coast. Canet has two beaches, the Platja de Canet in front of the town and the longer Platja del Cavaio to the northeast, both of coarse golden sand and both, like the whole Maresme shore, gradually replenished against erosion. The water shelves quickly and the sea here is calm by Atlantic standards; lifeguards operate through the summer season. This has been a fishing and, later, a textile coast rather than a resort one, and the built fabric shows it — nineteenth-century factory chimneys stand behind the beachfront, and the indiano mansions of returning Cuba emigrants line several streets in the centre.

Eating and the calendar. The Maresme is strawberry country, and the local maduixots dominate spring markets; the sea supplies the small blue fish and the sand-dwelling shellfish that anchor the regional kitchen. Canet keeps a weekly market and a lively patronal festival for the Mare de Deu de la Misericordia at the end of September, with human tower displays and sardana dancing on the Riera. Prices for a meal here sit well below equivalent quality in Barcelona, which is one practical argument for basing a coastal trip north of the city rather than in it.

A note on the beach and the railway. The line along this shore opened in 1861 and has defined the Maresme ever since, running between the promenade and the sand for most of its length. Level crossings and pedestrian underpasses give access to the beach, and the sea wall doubles as the seating for half the town on summer evenings. Proposals to move the tracks inland have been debated for decades without result, so the trains remain a feature of the coastal experience rather than an interruption to it, and the view from a north-bound window is one of the better rail approaches in Catalonia.

Getting there and timing. The Rodalies R1 line links Barcelona Placa de Catalunya and Sants with Canet de Mar in about an hour, running beside the water for the last twenty minutes; the station sits directly on the beach. Drivers take the C-32 motorway, which bypasses the coast road and its summer congestion. The Casa Museu and the castle both keep restricted opening hours and the castle requires arranged guided visits, so a day trip needs planning rather than improvisation. May, June and September are the sensible months: the water is swimmable from June, July and August are humid and busy with Barcelona weekenders, and the Modernista interiors are considerably more pleasant out of high summer. The town is compact and flat along the front, though the sanctuary and the castle both require a climb.