My high school Spanish teacher, Senora Palmquist, loved Salvador Dali and his hometown of Figueres in the Catalan region of Spain. She showed us pictures, art, and told us stories about her visits to Dali’s museum in Figueres and his waterfront home in Cadaques. I learned a lot about Dali’s weird life and the symbolism in his art. I wanted to see all of it for myself, but even though we have been in Spain a lot over the years, we never made time for a stop to see all the Dali stuff. We finally made it a priority for this year and booked an Airbnb for a 4 night stay.
Dali was a really weird guy and made some really weird stuff. I like weird people and I like weird stuff so of course I had to see this museum. He was also very self promoting and self absorbed which made a lot of the art community not very happy with him. He was a supporter of the the Spanish dictator Franco which turned off a lot of people. Franco killed and jailed hundreds of thousands of Spaniards, and Dali ignored that so he could continue his crazy lifestyle in Spain after the Spanish Civil War. But, I tried to forget that during our visit to the museum. Many artists were not good people. Picasso stood up to Franco…. but he also didn’t treat women nicely and wasn’t really known as a nice guy…. We tried to focus on the art. Dali really had many different styles and mediums, and the museum showed them all. There is so much symbolism that we really should have paid for a guide to explain everything, although I believe Dali was more into each person having their own interpretation and experience. The musuem itself was an old theatre and was redesigned into an art museum by Dali. There were even some moving electronic pieces that would work if you inserted a coin. He loved optical illusions and some of the most famous ones were centerpoints of the museum. There is a painting of his wife Gala that looks like Abraham Lincoln’s head from a distance. There was a room meant to look like the Mae West’s face. There was also an amazing ceiling painting of Dali and Gala that looks like a religious painting
We wanted to go visit Dali’s house in Cadaques, but that is something you need to reserve weeks ahead. Oops. Besides the Dali Museum, there are a few other things to in Figueres but none of them are very spectacular. You can go see Dali’s birthplace but it didn’t look interesting to us. There was another art museum but it was between exhibits so ended up skipping it. There was an 18th century fort that had a lot of Spanish Civil War history during the 20th century. I walked up there one day but it wasn’t open yet and I think I saw enough from the outside to see that it was a 18th century fort. We did find a toy museum that we spent an hour in. Toy museums are always a bit interesting…. There was a magic festival happening but the event seemed designed for kids so we didn’t see much. Overall, Figueres isn’t that great of a site-seeing town, but it was a lovely spot to linger. Sometimes it is good to just hang out in a regular town with mostly locals. Lots of Dali tourists but they sometimes only stay here to see the museum, as a day trip or a quick stay. There doesn’t seem to be a great restaurant scene, but we did find a couple of good meals at some local tapas places. 4 nights was probably too many nights, but I don’t have any regrets. We like staying 4 nights in places that only need 2 nights.
We were very close to the much larger town of Girona, so we decided to take a day trip. It is another beautiful Spanish town with some picturesque views of apartments along the river. It is very popular day trip for tourists from Barcelona. I’ve seen those pics for years and figured we had to take our own. It also has some nice cathedrals on the hill and some scenes of Game of Thrones were filmed here. We have now been to many Game of Thrones places and I still haven’t see the shows. We had a nice time wandering the alleys and having a decent and relaxing lunch on the tourist restaurant row. I did get some good pics and maybe Girona has a few more things to see than Figueres. Not sure, because we only stayed a few hours.
Overall, we would recommend the Dali museum in Figueres, but I’m not sure if it is a place to visit for more than a couple of days. Girona is also beautiful, but we were fine just making it a day trip. We are now ready to head south of Barcelona to see some more cute Spanish beach towns. Our next stop is Tarragona to see their big Concurs De Castells festival (competition of making human towers). I hope to have some good stories and pictures next week.