Astonished in Empuriabrava, Gulf of Roses
Zagan the motorhome is our second home. We have a small part of a house we call ‘The Cooler’ which we also live in when in the UK, while renting out the other bedrooms in the house. That, to me, is decadence. I’m a bit embarrassed by it. A luxury motorhome (none of that slide-out stuff you see on the telly – our 6m long machine is beautiful and comfortable while actually being park-able across medieval Europe) plus a UK residence which again is easily big enough to hold all the stuff we need. And we’re both 43 years old, and neither of us ever need to work again if we don’t want to (nah, there have been no lottery wins, inheritance, early pensions, finding of treasure and no state handouts have come our way).
Why am I blathering on about all of this? Empuriabrava, that’s why.
Baz left us a comment suggesting we round the Gulf of Roses before leaving Spain to see this place. I’m glad he did, it’s an eye opener. Counting the number of spots we’ve stayed in motorhomes since we started this blog, we’ve up to about 530 by now, so we’ve seen a lot of stuff man. These have included a fair few Roman sites, from Hadrian’s Wall down to Ksar Ghilane, so we opted to skip the site near to L’Escala. It’s becoming a tad difficult to find really jaw-dropping spots in Europe as a result, although I’m hoping Scandinavia will come up with the goods next year. But just when you think you’ve seen it all…
Empuriabrava is as old as I am – built on the location of a swamp in the late 60’s, early 70’s. Tourism in Spain must have been one serious Golden Child when the developers suggested the place. It’s a massive complex of villas, most of which front onto part of the 15 mile canal network, providing 5000 private moorings, and must have cost the Earth to create. Nowadays it’s got a population of about 8,000 in winter, rising to 80,000 in the heat of summer. We’re here in late November, and it’s pretty much empty.
After getting up at 7am to eyeball the sunrise this morning, we rolled off our perch and straight into a supermarket, smiling as ‘The weather outside is frightful’ played out across the isles while the sun poured down outside. Topped up with clinking bottles we then drove here, stopping at one end of the town as suggested in the park4night.com database (N42.25621 E3.10509). It’s a cracking spot, although as there are about 72,000 people missing, there’s a fair bit of free parking to be had throughout the place!
Tonight’s kipping spot in Empuriabrava. Flat it is too, woo, hoo!
After lunch, Ju and I headed off to see the town. And immediately I got a sight of the first canal my Money Muppet hat went on. There are either some seriously wealthy people around here, or I’m eyeballing the Greatest Show of Money Muppetry I’ve ever seen. Canal after canal rolled past, capped with glass-flat waters, reflecting white-washed villas and encasing the hulls of immobile yachts and pleasurecraft. There’s only the odd person to be seen, almost everywhere’s closed up for the winter. The closer we got to the beach, the bigger the villas, the more enormous the yachts, but still no people. Estate Agent windows drew us in. £450,000 seems about the going rate for a 3 bed villa with a mooring, which again seems about the average around these parts – this listings importantly tell you the distance your mooring is away from your door.
You dump your palm tree offcuts in special collection points here – nice idea.
I couldn’t do the maths in my head, but I have a computer here beneath my fingertips, just a mo. OK, I could have done the maths (shame on me!), but I got a bit carried away with compound interest and stuff, which is far too complex for this wee scenario.
Let’s make some massive assumptions, just for the hell of it. Say the well-heeled couple who own one of the £450k second-home villas have a very decent combined take home pay of £200k from their full-time jobs. Let’s then assume they’re frugal-ish and are saving 15% of that, so £30k a year (‘frugal’ to me would be min 50% savings rate, but this is just for fun). Very basic maths – it would take them 450/30 = 15 years of full time employment before they could afford the second villa. Hold on though, who saves up? They’d have a mortgage to speed stuff up, which would increase their costs. And they’d have bills for the villa. And they’d need to buy and run a nice boat and Porsche, or risk looking daft out here. Quick guess then – 20 years.
I’m sat here drinking a beer at 4pm on a Monday afternoon (which I don’t normally do, but again I’m making a point), looking at these guy’s unused villa, while they’re grafting their balls off in the office for the next 20 years, worrying about what happens if that seemingly endless flow of salary at any time happens to be halted by the fickle finger of (choose your weapon) a tanking economy/a mental breakdown/your boss changing to someone who hates you/your entire industry being shifted offshore and so on and so forth.
Boat garage? Sweet. I need one.
Russian Muppets (may be) here too.
Quite large boats near the sea.
Have to admit, it does look pleasant here!
Put more simply: my point is: this place appears to be the playground of the rich. But is it? I don’t know the answer. It could be. Maybe everyone here has bought the villa and yacht in cash, and has enough income from passive investments to chill out here in summer, while nipping to the Antipodean lands in winter to catch some rays? I’d quite like to believe this, but I have a wee suspicion there’s some Money Muppetry going on!
Interesting architecture among the standardised villas
Handy drinks chart – weird chip man on the left though – scary!
Anyone think of a more ironic yacht name?
Anyway, enough of all that. Our feet have carried us all the way to the coast, about 2.5km from here, but on the way back the walk weirdly increases to about 10 miles. Odd. Although I did need a wee, so that might have affected it. On that note, it’s time for another beer.
What’s this? Ju walking PAST a Chinese shop? Never fear, we looked around it on the way into town and Lidl is on the horizon.
Cheers! Jay
Not much like Leicester then–or Oldham if it comes to that!
Told you so! It is even more gob smacking in the summer with streams of boats passing each other all day long, out to sea and back again, covered in bronzed bodies and more than a few grey haired men with prominent beer bellies oozing wealth from every pore.
Their houses are goldfish bowls, though, with the tourists sailing past their windows having a good gawk. Rather them than me.
Perfect reflection of my thoughts entirely but it’s not just houses and yachts ..its camping cars as well ..God only knows how these people afford said £100k vans ..we are here in Capbreton amongst German vans …sorry wagons ..and our little Hetty which to us is big looks like a dinky toy ..
Hey Susan. You guys having a crack at surfing? So enjoyed watching folks catching waves up there at Capbreton.
£100k vans – easy enough if they sell their £250k house and move into the van for ever. Or work another decade longer to buy the flash-mobile? If someone does decide they need a £100k vehicle though, then they are creating a future problem: when they come to renew it, it’ll be at least £100k to get something similar, unless they’re happy to ‘downsize’ at that point, which means they need to work even longer to get a pension or other means of payment to renew the more expensive vehicle.
Lots of philosophy involved regarding delayed gratification and maintenance of personal status, but I too very much prefer the option of freedom now versus a £100k machine later!
Have fun! Cheers, Jay
Oh, oh, oh, and so many refugees out there in the cold…
Let’s hope they don’t all go bankrupt and have to sell one of those villas to a bird finger wielding bald man 😀🍻. Cheers Jay enjoy your trip
I never saw the attraction in having a second home by the sea unless I could afford it ten times over. I do wonder who owns them. I’ve played golf often in Spain and Portugal and it’s the same thing – fairways overlooked by empty mansions and apartments. I like to tell myself, as you were, that they’re slaving it in the office but I’m playing golf. And how many visits to play golf in Spain could I have for the price of their house? A 450k house would afford 450 luxury five star long weekends all over Spain and Portugal….
Mike and I stopped here late Sprinf. It was deserted then too. Have some good photos of Mike posing by some expensive boats. How the other half ( or is that 5%) live
Hi guys.
Just curious. How do you find the places you stay at?
We love touring Spain in our camper but are often worried we can’t find places to stay overnight. How do you find places?
Have to say we just love your blog. Long may it continue, have fun!
Richard & Lyn
Hi guys
Lots of options but we’re finding the park4night database is really good. Other than that, asking around as you go works wonders. The camperstop books is very good for official spots. We also use the campingcar-infos.com database but it’s not as good offline as park4night. For aires, the All the Aires books are good too, especially for La France.
Cheers! Jay
That’s a beautiful spot…. but no need to spend 450,000€ on a second home. Just pull in your motorhome and breathe in the air. And when they return year after year to the same spot, just think of all the stunning places you have visited in between. Game Over :)