Salt

The 17.15 train from Girona drops you three minutes later in a place whose name most guidebooks skip. Salt’s platform looks across a level crossing to a row of 1950s apartment blocks and, behind them, the glass warehouse of a Moroccan wholesaler. No medieval archway, no flower-decked balcony—just the smell of diesel and a sign in four languages telling you which way to the exit. That blunt first impression is, in its own way, honest: Salt is not pretending to be postcard-Catalonia. It is a working municipality of 33,000 people, 100-odd nationalities and a high street where a Senegalese tailor shares a wall with a Pakistani grocer and a bakery that begins baking crema catalana croissants at four in the morning.

A geography lesson in three layers

Stand on the iron footbridge over the river Monar and you can read the town like a geology chart. At water level the reed beds hide herons and the occasional supermarket trolley; just above them runs the carril bici, a flat cycle track that reaches Girona’s cathedral in twenty-five minutes and, in the opposite direction, the ruined locks of a nineteenth-century canal. The middle layer is late-20th-century housing thrown up when Girona’s university and hospitals expanded: five-storey blocks painted the colour of paella rice, balconies crammed with satellite dishes pointing south-east. Finally, on the slight ridge (all of 83 m above sea level, but enough to escape the last flood plain), you find the oldest fragment: the church of Sant Cugat, a fortified farmhouse called Can Fàbregues, and two short streets of Modernista façades that still have their original iron balconies, even if the ground floors are now phone-repair shops.

Lunch on four continents before the siesta kicks in

British visitors sometimes complain that “nobody speaks English”; the truth is more specific—waiters in the Indian-Moroccan canteens are happy to try, whereas the elderly Catalans in the corner bar will not. Use the situation as an excuse to point. A plate of thiéboudienne (fish-rice from Dakar) costs €9 at Afrikandé, arrives dyed sunset-orange with hibiscus, and feeds two. Next door, Lahori Kebab serves lamb karahi so mild that even a Worcestershire palate survives, while the Chinese-run bar two doors along will pour you a credible vermouth and bring plates of grilled razor clams for €2.50 each. If homesickness strikes, Can Xapes on Carrer Barcelona does a battered cod loin with proper malt vinegar, but you will be the only table ordering it; everyone else is eating pa amb tomàquet and stewed octopus.

Markets follow the same pattern. Monday to Saturday the covered market opens at eight: first hour is mostly Moroccan mothers choosing coriander by the kilo, late morning brings elderly Catalans arguing over the price of rabbit. Supermercat Annas sells fresh dates, dried mulukhiyah and five types of couscous; the stall opposite specialises in snails and pig’s trotters. There is no souvenir fridge magnet in sight, which is why some travellers call the place “charming” and others “bleak”.

What passes for sights

Salt will not fill a morning if you are ticking off monuments. Can Fàbregues is still private, so you stare at granite walls and wonder how many generations harvested wheat here before the suburbs arrived. The Molí de les Muroles, an old water-mill on the Monar, has been converted into flats, but the mill race survives—look down through the railings and you can see the channel that once powered the stones. The Modernista walk takes all of twelve minutes: start at the former railway station (trains stopped in 1996, now a health centre), admire curved stonework around two doorways, finish at the 1923 chimney of the Vapor Salt textile works, today a climbing wall with English-speaking instructors and a café that understands flat white.

The river paths are the real open-air museum. A 7-km loop follows the Monar to its confluence with the Ter, then back along the Ter’s flood bank. Cyclists share the track with parents pushing buggies and, at dusk, teenagers practising wheelies. The surface is tarmac, the gradients gentle, the shade patchy: start early in July or you will melt. Kingfishers flash blue above the water; on the opposite bank a medieval irrigation ditch still feeds vegetable plots guarded by bamboo fences and elderly men in flat caps.

When the town lets its hair down

Every late July Salt stages its Fiesta Mayor. Streets close for the correfoc—devils with fireworks dancing under a portable band—followed by outdoor film nights dubbed into Spanish and concerts that finish when the neighbours ring the police. September brings the Fira de la Diversitat: one stall sells Colombian arepas, another teaches Catalan line-dancing, a third offers henna tattoos and Brexit jokes in equal measure. For three days the town feels like a mini carnival, though accommodation inside Salt is thin on the ground; most visitors stay in Girona and catch the half-hourly bus.

The practical bits without the brochure speak

Bed down here only if you are on a tight budget. Salt’s single three-star hotel charges €65–€80 a night, roughly half the price of Girona’s old-town pensions, but evenings are quiet after ten. Trains to the coast continue to Flaçà and Figueres; the nearest beach, Platja de l’Estartit, is 35 min by car, 55 min by bus-change at Girona—fine for a day-trip, hopeless for a dawn swim. August temperatures sit in the mid-thirties and the tramuntana wind that cools the coast rarely reaches this far inland. May, early June and late September offer 25 °C days without the furnace blast.

English is spoken in the climbing centre, the Indian restaurants and the pharmacy on Plaça Catalunya—everywhere else, prepare GCSE Spanish or download an offline translator. Cash is still preferred in the market; the Moroccan supermarkets will accept cards from €10. Lock your bike: theft is opportunistic rather than organised, but a rusty chain invites trouble.

Exit via the underpass

By the time the sun sets behind the cell-phone mast on the ridge, Salt has revealed its bargain. It is not a destination in itself; it is a back-stage pass to twenty-first-century Catalonia, where African drums rehearse next door to a century-old textile chimney and the river that once drove industry now drives weekend joggers. Spend a morning here, cycle to Girona for lunch among the arches, return for thé à la menthe on a plastic chair while the church bells quarrel with the call to prayer from a basement mosque. Then board the 20.42 train back to Girona, satisfied that you have seen the region’s working engine rather than its polished façade—and that you paid Costa-Brava prices for exactly nothing.