Abandoned on the Costa Brava: Hotel Miramar

l’Estartit #8, Catalunya, 2018

The Costa Brava town of l’Estartit is a popular destination for summer beach tourists as well as for snorkelers and scuba divers wanting to take the salty plunge and tour the underwater gardens surrounding the Illes Medes (Medes Islands), a seaside nature preserve.

I wouldn’t classify l’Estartit as one of the most beautiful towns on the Costa Brava but it’s an excellent diving location and a super jump-off point for exploring the classic, don’t-miss-’em, medieval towns of Begur, Pals, Peratallada, et al.

One of the reasons I say it doesn’t rank near the top in my best beach town book is because of the number of abandoned and semi-abandoned/unsold properties throughout the urban center. Walk the streets behind and around tourist alley (Carrer Santa Anna) and the coastal street (Passeig Marítim) and you’ll see what I mean. Lots of real estate opportunities here…or, perhaps, real estate traps???

Probably the most famous and obvious of these abandoned properties is the Hotel Miramar, built in 1928 right along Passeig Marítim, just behind the big, sandy beachfront. The cause of said abandonment? Apparently, in the current economy, there is much more demand for vacation apartments for families and groups rather than for luxury (read: expensive/high overhead) hotel rooms for couples and small families.

So, there it sits, on prime beachfront terrain in l’Estartit…the once lush-but-groomed gardens very gradually swarming and ingesting the crumbling and grafitti-blasted human structures.

Time marches on…the paradigm shifts…and the weeds cover the memories…dust to dust, as they say.