Verges

The lights go out at 23:30 sharp. One moment the narrow lanes are packed with spectators clutching carrier bags from Lidl; the next, the only illumination comes from hand-held torches and the orange glow of cigarettes. A drum strikes. From the shadows emerge figures in black habits, faces hidden, carrying scythes. At their centre, a man dressed as a skeleton begins to dance. This is Verges on Maundy Thursday, and the village’s medieval Dance of Death is under way.

For the other 361 nights of the year, Verges slips back into near-anonymity. Five thousand people live here, spread along three perpendicular streets that meet at a modest plaça shaded by plane trees. There are no souvenir stalls, no sea view, no boutique hotels. What you get instead is a stone-walled grid that has barely shifted since the 14th century, surrounded by flat fields of onions famous throughout Catalonia for their sweetness. The smell of them frying drifts from kitchen windows at dusk, mixing with wood-smoke and the faint salt tang blown inland from the Costa Brava, twelve kilometres away.

A village that turns its back on the sea

Verges sits on a low ridge between the Ter and Daró rivers, just high enough to avoid the floods that shaped this plain. The sea is close enough for a morning swim—L’Estartit’s long sandy beach is a fifteen-minute drive—but the village has always looked inland, not seaward. Medieval merchants came here for grain and hemp, not fish; the old granaries still line Carrer Major, their wooden doors wide enough for a cartload of barley. Even today, the daily rhythm is set by tractors rather than tides. At 07:00 a convoy of rumbling JCBs heads out to the fields; by 19:00 the lanes are quiet except for the clack of pétanque balls beside the town hall.

That sense of agricultural continuity makes Verges a useful counterweight to the coast’s holiday condos. You can cycle here from the beach along the Ter path, a dead-flat gravel track that follows the river through poplars and rice paddies. Hire bikes in Torroella de Montgrí (€15 a day) and ride inland for 40 minutes; the temperature drops two degrees under the plane trees and the traffic noise fades to a single tractor. Padlock the bikes to the iron railings outside the walled cemetery—nobody steals things here—and you’re free to explore on foot.

What the stones say

Start at the Portal de la Creu, the only surviving gate in the medieval walls. The arch is only shoulder-width: attackers had to dismount, while defenders could pick them off from the tower above. Inside, the street narrows to a tunnel where the sun reaches the cobbles for barely an hour at noon. Look up and you’ll see slots for the hinged bridge that once spanned a ditch; the wood is long gone, but the grooves are polished by centuries of fingering.

The church of Sant Julià i Santa Basilissa squats at the highest point, its bell-tower patched with brick after an 18th-century lightning strike. The door is usually unlocked; push past the heavy curtain and you’ll find a single nave lined with the sort of timber roof that English visitors associate with Norfolk barns. The only splash of colour is a fragment of Romanesque fresco—two saints with almond eyes and mathematically precise halos—saved from a demolition in 1897 and glued rather clumsily to the north wall. Lighting is poor; use your phone torch and the pigments suddenly glow like wet paint.

Behind the altar lies the real surprise: a tiny museum containing six painted wooden figures carried in the Easter procession. The centrepiece is a 17th-century skeleton whose jaw drops on a hinge to reveal a painted tongue. It’s macabre, yes, but also oddly jaunty—the bones are picked out in silver leaf, and someone has given the figure jaunty red socks. Photography is forbidden; the custodian, an 82-year-old called Maria who wears her house keys on a ribbon round her neck, will follow you round to make sure you obey. She softens if you ask about the socks: “My grandfather added those in 1948. Said the dead should have a bit of cheer.”

Eating between two breads

By 13:30 the plaça fills with farm workers in moss-green wellies, converging on Bar Empòrium for the menú del dia. Three courses, bread, wine and coffee cost €14; the menu is written on a torn-out page of an exercise book and changes according to what the chef found at the market. Expect a bowl of rice cooked in cuttlefish ink—alarmingly black but tasting of the sea—followed by rabbit stewed with sweet Verges onions. Vegetarians get escalivada, a smoky tangle of aubergine and red pepper served tepid, as the Spanish prefer it. Pudding is usually crema catalana, blasted with a blow-torch at the table so the sugar forms the same glassy crust as a Cambridge burnt cream.

If you need something faster, order a bikini: not swimwear but a pressed ham-and-cheese toastie that arrives cut into four neat fingers. The name supposedly comes from a 1950s Barcelona café frequented by visiting Bikini Atoll journalists; whatever the truth, it’s the closest thing to a British toasted sandwich you’ll find.

Thursday night fever (of the medieval kind)

The Dance of Death turns the village into a one-way system of human traffic. From 18:00 on Maundy Thursday the police close the medieval gates; residents must show a pass to enter. Visitors park on the sports ground south of the walls and join a torch-lit queue that snakes through onion fields. Tickets cost €10 online, €12 on the night, and sell out by mid-March. Bring warm layers—the wind off the Pyrenees slices through denim—and something to sit on; the parade lasts two hours and there are no seats.

At 22:00 a single drum begins to beat inside the walls. Spectators crush into Carrer dels Fossos, a lane barely three metres wide, and the lights die. What follows is part morality play, part street theatre. Ten skeletal figures process in slow motion, scythes raised, to the clatter of kettledrums. They dance in total silence, feet scuffing the cobbles in perfect time, white skull masks glowing under the torches. The effect is hypnotic rather than jolly; small children often cry, and parents hoist them onto shoulders for reassurance. At the climax the dancers form a circle, scythes interlocked like wagon wheels, and revolve until the drum stops dead. Total darkness. Then the church bell strikes midnight, the lights flick back on, and the crowd exhales as if waking from a dream.

Beds, bikes and bargains

Accommodation within the walls is limited to two guesthouses, each with six rooms. Hostal la Plaça (doubles from €70, breakfast €7) overlooks the plane-tree square; rooms are plain but spotless, with shuttered windows that muffle the 07:00 tractor convoy. The smarter option is Cal Ganxo, a 17th-century stone house converted into four apartments with tiny rooftop pools (from €120). Book early for Easter week; otherwise you’ll be sleeping in Torroella and taxiing back at €25.

If you’re combining coast and country, base yourself at the beach and treat Verges as a day trip. L’Estartit has ample apartments outside July-August; a two-bedroom flat with parking costs around €90 in May. Drive inland after breakfast, spend the morning cycling the Ter path, eat lunch in the plaça, and still reach the sand in time for an afternoon swim. The contrast—medieval darkness at midnight, bright Mediterranean sun at noon—feels like travelling between centuries rather than kilometres.

Come in late April and you’ll catch the onion harvest: tractors trail trailers piled high with golden bulbs, their sweetness so intense you can smell it through the car window. Or choose October, when the rice paddies south of the village turn bronze and egrets gather like scraps of paper against the sky. Summer is hotter—35 °C is common—and the coastal traffic can add thirty minutes to the twelve-kilometre drive back to the beach. But even in August Verges itself stays hushed, the only soundtrack cicadas and the occasional clink of cycling cleats on stone.

Leave before the lights go out, or stay and let the skeletons dance. Either way, you’ll remember the sweetness of the onions long after the skull masks have faded.