Vilafant

The 10:05 from Barcelona glides into Figueres-Vilafant station at 11:02, precisely on time. Half the passengers blink at the platform signs, realise they are still three kilometres short of Figueres itself, and scramble for the exit. That moment of mild confusion is how most people first meet Vilafant—an unscheduled pause between the high-speed line and the Dalí Theatre-Museum they actually came to see.

Stay longer than the taxi ride allows and a different picture emerges. Beyond the glass-and-steel transport hub lies a flat grid of small streets where elderly women still beat rugs over balcony rails and the butcher knows which farm supplied this morning’s lamb. At 54 metres above sea level, the village sits in the flood-plain of the Empordà, a district that earns its living from artichokes, apples and the steady trickle of rail passengers who decide to break the journey.

The Station That Outgrew the Town

Figueres-Vilafant is technically two stations in one. The original 1864 stop—little more than a siding—was swallowed when Spain’s AVE network arrived in 2013. The new concourse, all polished concrete and passport scanners, now funnels Paris-bound travellers straight through what used to be cabbage fields. Security is airport-style: arrive twenty-five minutes early or risk the single luggage scanner that jams when someone forgets to empty water bottles.

British visitors use it as a stress-free alternative to Barcelona-Sants. Tickets bought online (print at home) let you step off a Ryanair flight at Girona and be in central Paris before supper—no need to enter Barcelona at all. The downside is the taxi mafia outside: a five-minute hop into Figueres starts at €8 before the meter moves. Local bus L2 costs €1.35 and leaves every half-hour from the roundabout opposite; the walk takes thirty minutes if the tramuntana wind isn’t blowing hard enough to steal your hat.

A Plain Village, Not a Plain Village

Vilafant’s skyline is a study in low-rise pragmatism. Church of Sant Martí, bell-tower, silos of a feed merchant, repeat. The 5,600 inhabitants live in terraced houses painted the colours of dried oregano and sun-bleached tomato. Side streets end abruptly at orchard gates; the smell of chicken manure drifts across car parks. It is ordinary, and that is the appeal. No souvenir shops, no audio-guide rental booths, just the daily rhythm of a place that refuses to become a museum of itself.

The parish church, rebuilt piecemeal since the fourteenth century, keeps its doors unlocked. Inside, the cool darkness smells of candle wax and the previous Sunday’s lilies. A side chapel displays a nineteenth-century model fishing boat hanging from the ceiling—someone’s promise kept after a storm off Cadaqués. Drop fifty cents in the box and the caretaker will switch on the lights so you can see the faded fresco of Saint Martin cutting his cloak in half. Outside, the plaça is just wide enough for a game of five-a-side; teenagers use it that way every evening until the bar owner wheels out his tables and reclaims the space for beer and crisps.

Where to Eat (and Where Not To)

Vilafant itself offers two cafés, a bakery that runs out of croissants by nine, and a pizzeria that also does takeaway paella—useful if your villa pool has melted the will to cook. Serious eating happens in Figueres, five minutes away by bus. Can Pau on Carrer Perelada serves charcoal-grilled lamb cutlets and has an English menu for the linguistically timid. Hotel Empordà’s terrace, an easy stroll from the station, does a child-friendly three-course menu—roast chicken, chips, crème-catalana—without anyone muttering about cultural dilution.

Self-caterers head to the Plus Fresc supermarket on Avinguda Empordà. British tea, Marmite and sliced white bread live on the “international” shelf, proof that the villa market is noticed. Ask the key-holder in advance and most rental companies will stock a welcome pack: milk in the fridge, kettle on the counter, and a packet of Digestives to fend off arrival meltdown.

Bases, Walks and Day-Trips

Vilafant works because it is quiet at night yet ten minutes from everything marketed on the Costa Brava brochures. A hire car turns the village into an inexpensive base: half an hour north brings you to the first coves of the coast—try El Castell just outside Palamós where the sand is coarse but the parking free. Drive twenty minutes west and you are among the volcanic hills of La Garrotxa; an hour south-west sets you down in Girona’s old town, cathedral included, long before the lunchtime queues form.

Closer to home, a lattice of farm tracks links Vilafant to neighbouring municipalities. The Tourist Office (open Tuesday and Thursday mornings in the library) hands out a photocopied leaflet titled “Voltants de Vilafant” that plots a 7-km loop through artichoke fields and past a thirteenth-century mill now used as a weekend retreat. Spring is best: the soil smells of wet clay, storks drift overhead, and the tramuntana has not yet reached the irritable strength it achieves in February. Summer walkers should start early; shade is scarce and the thermometer nudges 35 °C by eleven.

When the Wind Blows

The tramuntana is not a gentle sea breeze. It is a katabatic freight train that rolls off the Pyrenees, picks up speed across the plain and exits through Cap de Creus, rattling roof tiles as it goes. Locals claim it affects temperament—Dalí painted faster when it blew, and whole divorce rates rise, they insist, after a week of uninterrupted wind. In Vilafant you will hear it before you feel it: a low hum in the telegraph wires, then the slam of a metal shutter somewhere down the street. Close the balcony doors, find a sheltered café corner, and wait. It usually exhausts itself within forty-eight hours.

Winter visits bring a different bonus: the station café does a proper hot chocolate, thick enough to support a teaspoon, and hotel prices drop by a third. The downside is daylight—sunrise after eight, dusk at five—and the possibility that heavy rain will turn the plain into a shallow lake. Check the forecast if you are on foot; flooded irrigation ditches make the farm tracks impassable.

Leaving, Probably Too Soon

Most travellers see Vilafant only through taxi windows: a blur of vegetable plots and warehouse units on the way to somewhere older, prettier, more obviously Catalan. That is a reasonable choice, but it misses the small pleasure of a place that has learned to live beside greatness without succumbing to it. The Dalí museum will still be there tomorrow, and the Costa Brava will still selfie perfectly. Tonight, though, the church bell will strike nine, the bakery shutters will clatter down, and someone will order the last plate of patatas bravas before the kitchen closes. You could do worse than be that someone.