CAP DE CREUS, THE PYRENEES MEET THE MEDITERRANEAN

After spending a few days with her Neapolitan friends, The Grandma is spending some time on the Costa Brava, where she plans to enjoy her favourite hobbies: sailing, scuba diving, history, birdwatching, and literature.

And she won't be alone, as Claire Fontaine and Joseph de Ca'th Lon have joined her to enjoy a few days of rest before visiting Lyon next weekend, where a very interesting football match awaits them.

As an older person, The Grandma has been reflecting on the wonderful, unique places the Catalan coast has to offer, and she started with Cap de Creus, where they enjoyed a fantastic day of scuba diving in a fascinating and beautiful location.

There are places where nature seems to have decided to show everything it is capable of doing. Cap de Creus is one of those places.

After spending some time in Napoli and writing about Vesuvius, it feels almost natural to continue the journey through another landscape where geology and life are impossible to separate. Vesuvius is a volcano that reminds us that the Earth is still alive beneath our feet. Cap de Creus tells a different story: one of ancient mountains, metamorphic rocks, tectonic forces, wind, erosion and a Mediterranean Sea that has slowly transformed the landscape into something extraordinary.

The difference is that at Cap de Creus, the landscape does not stop at the shoreline. It continues underwater. And when you dive here, you discover that what looks like a spectacular rocky peninsula from the surface is only the beginning of the story. 

Cap de Creus occupies the easternmost end of the Iberian Peninsula, where the Pyrenees finally reach the Mediterranean. Geologically, it belongs to the axial zone of the Pyrenees, the part of the mountain range where some of its oldest rocks are exposed. The geological history of Cap de Creus goes back hundreds of millions of years, to the Paleozoic Era, when sediments accumulated in environments very different from those we know today.

Over geological time, those sediments were buried, compressed, heated and transformed. The result is the extraordinary variety of metamorphic rocks that characterises the peninsula: schists and phyllites, but also marble, quartzite, amphibolite and gneiss. There are also granodiorites and, in some areas, much younger basaltic rocks.

In other words, when you walk through Cap de Creus, you are not simply walking through a beautiful Mediterranean landscape. You are walking through geological history. The rocks record enormous forces that operated long before humans existed: sedimentation, burial, metamorphism, folding, faulting, mountain building and erosion.

The Variscan orogeny, hundreds of millions of years ago, profoundly transformed the ancient rocks. Much later, the Alpine orogeny contributed to the formation of the Pyrenees and produced further deformation in the Cap de Creus area.

The landscape we see today is therefore the result of several geological worlds superimposed upon one another.

And then came the wind. 

Few places in the Mediterranean demonstrate the power of wind as clearly as Cap de Creus. The Tramuntana has shaped the peninsula for thousands upon thousands of years. Together with rain, waves, temperature changes and other erosive processes, it has sculpted the rocks into an almost surreal landscape of cliffs, ridges, gullies, coves and bizarrely shaped formations. Sometimes the landscape looks almost extraterrestrial. This is not surprising. The rocks are heavily fractured and folded, providing erosion with countless weaknesses to exploit. Water and wind penetrate cracks, enlarge them and gradually remove the material around them. The result is a coastline that seems to have been carved rather than simply eroded. And the sea continues the process. Every wave that strikes a cliff is participating in a geological experiment that began millions of years ago. The landscape is never finished. It is still being created.

For someone who dives, this peninsula reveals another dimension. The marine environment of Cap de Creus is extraordinarily diverse because the seabed is extraordinarily complex. There are rocky bottoms and soft sediments, shallow illuminated areas and dark deeper environments, sheltered coves and places exposed to strong currents, waves and the Tramuntana.

This enormous variety of habitats creates an equally extraordinary variety of life. And descending beneath the surface feels like entering another version of the same geological landscape. The rocks that dominate the coastline continue underwater as walls, ledges, caves, cracks and reefs. But now they are covered by living organisms. The Mediterranean suddenly becomes a three-dimensional forest.

One of the first things that can transform a dive is the sight of a meadow of Posidonia oceanica. Posidonia is not an alga but a marine flowering plant. Its underwater meadows are among the most important ecosystems in the Mediterranean. They provide shelter, food and nursery areas for numerous species, while their roots and rhizomes help stabilise the seabed. They also contribute to oxygen production and to the productivity of coastal ecosystems. Swimming above a Posidonia meadow can therefore feel deceptively peaceful. Beneath the apparently simple green leaves, there is an entire ecosystem. Small fish hide among the plants. Juveniles find refuge there. Invertebrates move between the leaves and the seabed. Predators patrol the edges. What looks like a meadow is actually a city. And every square metre can be full of life.

As you descend, the underwater landscape changes. Light gradually disappears, algae become less dominant and another community begins to emerge: the coraligenous habitat. The word "coralligenous" may sound as if it refers simply to coral, but the reality is much more complex. It is a highly structured Mediterranean community created largely by organisms such as coralline algae, which build and cement a complex three-dimensional habitat. It becomes a kind of underwater architecture. And among its most spectacular inhabitants are the red gorgonians. Their branches rise from the rocks like underwater trees.

They are animals, not plants, and their colonies create shelter and structure for numerous other organisms. Around them, the apparently bare rock becomes a living world of sponges, bryozoans, molluscs, crustaceans and fish. Then there is another extraordinary presence: red coral, Corallium rubrum.

Cap de Creus is particularly remarkable for the presence of this species, one of the Mediterranean organisms that has fascinated humans for centuries. But underwater, coral is not simply something beautiful to collect or admire. It is part of a complex ecosystem that has evolved over immense periods of time.

The rocky seabeds of Cap de Creus are home to an impressive variety of Mediterranean fish. You may encounter seabreams moving through the water, wrasses exploring the rocks, colourful salema feeding among the algae, or a grouper watching from the entrance of a cave. And then there are the species that seem to have been designed specifically for camouflage.

The red scorpionfish is a perfect example. It can sit almost motionless among the rocks, relying on camouflage rather than speed. Unless you know what you are looking for, you may swim past one without realising that a fish is watching you. The same is true of moray eels, which often remain hidden inside cracks and caves, revealing only their heads. And perhaps one of the most fascinating encounters for a diver is the common octopus. The octopus is not simply another animal on the seabed. It is an intelligence encounter. It can change colour and texture, manipulate objects, explore its environment and disappear into its surroundings with extraordinary efficiency.

In Cap de Creus, the rocky landscape provides exactly the kind of complex environment in which such an animal can thrive.

Not everything remarkable is large. Look carefully into the cracks and shadows and another world appears. Crustaceans occupy the crevices. Sea stars move slowly across the rocks. Sea urchins graze on algae. Polychaete worms live within the seabed. Sponges and bryozoans cover surfaces that, from a distance, appear lifeless.

The deeper you look, the more obvious the fundamental lesson of Cap de Creus becomes: absence of movement does not mean absence of life. Sometimes the richest places are the ones that initially appear empty.

One of the most remarkable geological features of Cap de Creus is not visible from the land at all. Off the peninsula lies a major submarine canyon that descends rapidly into the deep Mediterranean. The underwater topography is therefore not simply an extension of the coastline. It is a continuation of the geological drama. The cliffs we see above the water become walls and slopes below it, while the seabed suddenly opens into much deeper environments. These changes in depth and topography influence currents, sediments, nutrients and the distribution of marine organisms.

The sea here is not a uniform blue space. It is a landscape. And, like the terrestrial landscape, it has mountains, valleys, walls, forests, plains and canyons. Only we cannot see most of them from the surface.

There is another fascinating connection between the landscape above and the life below. The Tramuntana does not simply sculpt the rocks. It also influences the sea. Strong winds can mix surface waters with deeper waters, helping to bring nutrients into the marine ecosystem. Together with currents and the complex underwater topography, this contributes to the productivity of the waters around Cap de Creus. The same wind that makes the landscape look harsh can therefore help sustain the extraordinary richness beneath the waves. It is one of those beautiful contradictions of nature. A force capable of eroding the landscape can also help nourish the life that surrounds it.

The waters of Cap de Creus can also become a meeting point for animals that are not permanently associated with the seabed. The pelagic environment -the open water itself- is inhabited by plankton, jellyfish, small crustaceans and countless microscopic organisms that form the foundation of marine food webs. Among the larger inhabitants are sardines, anchovies and bonito. And, depending on the season and circumstances, the wider waters can also be visited by migratory species such as sea turtles and cetaceans. The Mediterranean may sometimes look like an empty blue surface. It isn't. It is one of the most densely interconnected ecosystems on Earth.

Perhaps this is why moving from Vesuvius to Cap de Creus feels so natural. Vesuvius tells the story of fire. Cap de Creus tells the story of time. One landscape was dramatically shaped by volcanic activity; the other preserves the scars of ancient mountain building, metamorphism and erosion. But both remind us of the same thing: the landscape is never merely scenery. It is a geological archive. At Vesuvius, you can look at a volcano and imagine the enormous forces that lie beneath it.

At Cap de Creus, you can look at a folded schist, a fractured cliff or a strangely sculpted rock and read the traces of forces that acted hundreds of millions of years ago. Then you put on a mask and descend beneath the surface. And suddenly the story changes again. The ancient rocks become the foundations of a living ecosystem. Posidonia grows above them. Gorgonians rise from them. Corals occupy their cracks. Octopuses disappear among them. Moray eels watch from their caves. Fish move through the labyrinth. And somewhere beyond the familiar coastline, the seabed plunges into a submarine canyon.

The geological and biological stories are not separate. They are the same story. Life builds upon geology. Geology creates habitats. The sea transforms rock. The rock shelters life. The wind changes the sea. The sea changes the coast. And everything is connected.

Standing at Cap de Creus, with the Mediterranean stretching towards the horizon, it is tempting to think of this place as the end of something. The easternmost point of Catalunya. The end of the Pyrenees. The place where the mountains meet the sea. But perhaps it is better understood as a beginning. A beginning of the Mediterranean. A beginning of an underwater world. A beginning of a geological journey that reaches far beyond what our eyes can see. And when you dive here, you realise that Cap de Creus is much larger than the peninsula that appears on a map. Its real landscape continues beneath the surface. Its rocks continue downward. Its ecosystems extend into darkness. Its canyon opens into the deep. And the Mediterranean keeps writing the next chapter.

After Vesuvius, Cap de Creus feels like a perfect reminder that nature does not need to choose between drama and beauty. Sometimes it offers both. Sometimes the most spectacular landscapes are made not by a single catastrophic event, but by millions of years of pressure, movement, erosion, wind and water. And sometimes, to see the whole story, you simply have to dive.

More information: Orca Diving

Jo veig com si fos ara aquell dia de 1921 
en què els perfums i els colors
d’aquest inoblidable país de Cap de Creus
varen sorprendre els meus sentits.

I can still see, as clearly as if it were yesterday, 

that day in 1921 
when the scents and colours 
of this unforgettable land of Cap de Creus 
first overwhelmed my senses.

Tomàs Garcés

CASTEL DELL'OVO, THE PROMONTORY OF OLD MEGARIDE

Musings of The Grandma...

There are places that you visit once. And there are places that become part of you. For me, Castel dell'Ovo belongs firmly to the second category.

When I lived in Napoli, I used to walk down to the port almost every day. I needed the Mediterranean the way some people need music, coffee or fresh air. I would walk along the waterfront, following the sea, until the paved path carried me towards the ancient fortress standing on the small island-like promontory of Megaride.

I have been to Castel dell'Ovo many times. But one visit remains particularly vivid. It was my thirtieth birthday. Claire Fontaine came from Barcelona to visit to me and she had bought a tiny Neapolitan cake and brought some candles with her. We sat there in the late afternoon, looking towards the bay, trying to keep the candles alight while the sea breeze repeatedly blew them out. We laughed. We tried again. The candles went out again. And again. More than twenty years have passed since then. The castle is still there. The sea is still there. Napoli is still there. But we are not the same people who sat there that evening. Perhaps this is what places like Castel dell'Ovo teach us. Stone has an extraordinary memory. Human beings do not.

The first surprise about Castel dell'Ovo is that it is considerably older than its medieval appearance suggests. Much older. The fortress we see today is only the latest chapter of a story that began long before medieval Napoli existed.

The rocky promontory of Megaride occupies a remarkable position at the edge of the Bay of Napoli. It is almost impossible to imagine a better place from which to understand why this coastline has attracted human beings for thousands of years.

Before the castle, before the Roman villa, before the medieval fortress, there was the Greek world. The story of Napoli is deeply connected with the Greek settlements of Campania. The ancient city of Neapolis  -the “new city”- emerged within a landscape already shaped by earlier Greek foundations, including Parthenope.

Megaride belongs to that very early layer of the city's history. And this is why I find Castel dell'Ovo so fascinating. It is not simply a castle. It is a historical palimpsest. One civilisation built upon the traces of another. One era transformed the structures left by the previous one. Names changed. Gods changed. Languages changed. Political powers changed. But the rock remained. And the sea remained.

Then came Rome. And the story of Megaride took another extraordinary turn. The promontory became associated with the Castrum Lucullanum, the luxurious seaside complex traditionally connected with the Roman statesman Lucius Licinius Lucullus. Lucullus is remembered not only as a military commander and politician, but also for his legendary wealth and extravagant lifestyle. His villa complex in Napoli became almost synonymous with Roman luxury. Gardens. Terraces. Exotic plants. Fishponds. Banquets. Libraries. The kind of wealth that eventually gave rise to the word Lucullan -something extraordinarily luxurious or sumptuous.

It is difficult to reconcile that image with the fortress we see today. And yet this is precisely what makes Napoli so extraordinary. The same piece of land can be, at different moments, a Greek settlement, a Roman villa, a fortified site, a monastic complex and a medieval castle. Napoli does not erase its past. It builds over it.

Perhaps one of the most extraordinary chapters in the history of Megaride came at the end of the Western Roman Empire. In the fifth century, the complex was fortified. And in 476, after the young emperor Romulus Augustulus was deposed, he was sent into exile in Napoli. Think about that for a moment. The same Mediterranean landscape that had witnessed Greek colonisation, Roman expansion and extraordinary imperial wealth was now witnessing the end of the Western Roman imperial tradition. One world was disappearing. Another was beginning. And Megaride was still there. Watching. A castle that wasn't always a castle Over the centuries, the site continued to change.

There was a monastic presence. There were fortifications. There were Norman transformations. The strategic importance of the promontory increased as Napoli developed into one of the great cities of the Mediterranean. Eventually, the medieval fortress that we recognise today emerged. But I think calling it simply a “medieval castle” is slightly misleading. Because when you stand there, you are standing on layer upon layer of history. Greek Napoli. Roman Napoli. Late Antiquity. Medieval Napoli. And, eventually, modern Napoli. It is almost as if the city has compressed more than two thousand years into a single rock.

Of course, no story about Castel dell'Ovo would be complete without its most famous legend. The name itself means “Castle of the Egg.” According to medieval tradition, the Roman poet Virgil -who was already surrounded by a considerable aura of magic and mystery in the medieval imagination- supposedly hid a magical egg somewhere within the castle. As long as the egg remained intact, the castle -and even Napoli itself- would remain safe. If the egg were ever broken, disaster would follow. It is an extraordinary legend. But perhaps it is also an extraordinarily Neapolitan one.

Because Napoli has always lived comfortably alongside the boundary between history and legend, faith and superstition, the sacred and the everyday. The city that venerates Saint Januarius can also turn Diego Armando Maradona into a deity. The city that celebrates its saints can be fascinated by ghosts and the souls of the dead. The city that preserves Roman ruins can tell stories about magical eggs. In Napoli, these things do not necessarily contradict one another. They simply coexist.

There is another reason Castel dell'Ovo means so much to me. Its position makes it impossible to forget the sea. And the sea is the thread that connects so many of the places I have been writing about. At Paestum, I found the Greek Mediterranean. At Pompeii and Herculaneum, the Roman Mediterranean. At Procida, Ischia, Capri and Baia, I found islands and coastlines shaped by the same sea. And here, at Castel dell'Ovo, all those layers seem to converge.

The Mediterranean was never simply a geographical boundary. It was a highway. Greek ships crossed it. Phoenician ships crossed it. Roman ships crossed it. Merchants, soldiers, migrants, artists, philosophers and travellers crossed it. Languages travelled across it. Religions travelled across it. Recipes travelled across it. Ideas travelled across it. Cultures collided, mixed and transformed one another. And Napoli was always there, facing the sea.

Perhaps this is why I love returning to Castel dell'Ovo. Every time I walk towards it, I see the same stones. But I am never the same person. When I was thirty, Claire and I sat there with our little cake and our hopeless candles, fighting against the evening breeze. We were young. We had no idea how quickly the following twenty years would disappear.

Today, when I think about that evening, the memory feels almost like an archaeological layer of my own life. The castle has survived centuries. It has survived political upheavals, wars, earthquakes, bombardments and the transformation of Napoli around it. We have not. And perhaps that is the most humbling thing about ancient places. They make us realise how brief our own existence is. Tempus fugit. Time flies. Or perhaps, more accurately, time simply moves forward while we remain for a moment in its path.

This is something I have learned repeatedly while travelling through Campania. At Paestum, the Greek temples remain standing. At Pompeii, an entire Roman city was preserved by catastrophe. At Herculaneum, streets and houses still tell us about people who lived almost two thousand years ago. At Castel dell'Ovo, different civilisations have left their traces on the same piece of land. The monuments remain. We change. Our bodies age. Our friendships evolve. People we loved disappear. Cities transform. And yet, sometimes, we can return to the same place and recover a moment that we thought had been lost.

That is what happened to me at Castel dell'Ovo. I can still see the late afternoon. I can still see the bay. I can still see that tiny cake. And I can still see the candles being extinguished by the Mediterranean breeze. For a few seconds, twenty years disappear. And I am thirty again.

Perhaps that is the real magic of Castel dell'Ovo. Not the egg. Not the legend. Not even the extraordinary history of Megaride. It is the fact that the place has witnessed so much human history while remaining stubbornly present. Greek settlers came. Romans came. Emperors disappeared. Kings came. Monks came. Armies came. Cities changed. People were born and died. And the Mediterranean continued to breathe beside the rock.

Castel dell'Ovo remains there, looking across the Bay of Naples as it has done for centuries. And every time I walk towards it, I am reminded of something both beautiful and slightly painful: the monuments endure, but our lives are only a brief visit. 

Perhaps that is why we should look. Really look. At the temples. At the castles. At the sea. At the people sitting beside us. At the friends who share the journey. At the tiny cakes. At the candles that refuse to stay alight. Because one day, those small moments will become our own archaeology. And perhaps, after we are gone, someone else will walk along the same path, look at the same stones and remember that human beings once stood there too.

Tempus fugit. The castle remains. The sea remains. And for one brief moment, we are here.

Mediterranean, as always.

More information: LBV

Forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit.
Perhaps one day we will find joy 

 in remembering these things.

 

Virgil

PAESTUM, WHERE THE MEDITERRANEAN REMEMBERS

Musings of The Grandma...

There are places you visit. And then there are places that seem to recognise you. Paestum is one of them.

I had visited it several times before, always arriving by car. I knew the road, the landscape, the approach, and the extraordinary moment when the ancient temples began to emerge from the Mediterranean countryside. But one year, when my friend Claire Fontaine travelled with me through Campania, I decided to show her Paestum without telling her where we were going. I wanted her to discover it. We took the train and got off at Paestum station. And then, for the first time, I realised that there was a small problem. I had always arrived by car. I knew where Paestum was. I simply wasn't entirely sure how to get there from the railway station. So I did what generations of travellers had done before smartphones, GPS and Google Maps: I looked at the sun, tried to work out where the sea was, and confidently started walking.

About one or two hundred metres later, I had to confess. "I don't actually know where we are." Claire was not particularly impressed. Especially because it was very hot. We continued walking. And then, suddenly, we crossed a small pine grove. And there they were. The temples. I will never forget Claire's face. "Oh my God." It was not the reaction of someone looking at a collection of archaeological ruins. It was the reaction of someone suddenly  confronted with something extraordinarily beautiful. Something ancient. Something that had survived.

There, beneath the Campanian sun, stood the monumental Greek temples of Paestum, astonishingly preserved after more than two thousand years. And there were hardly any people around. For a moment, it felt as though we had discovered them ourselves.

Paestum was originally founded by the Greeks as Poseidonia, probably towards the end of the 7th century BC. It was part of the extraordinary Greek presence in southern Italy that we call Magna Graecia -Megálē Hellás, Greater Greece. This is one of the things that makes southern Italy so fascinating. The ancient Mediterranean was never a collection of isolated civilisations. It was a network. People travelled. They sailed. They traded. They founded cities. They carried their gods, languages, artistic traditions, architectural ideas, food and customs with them.

The Greeks reached the shores of southern Italy and Sicily and established communities that became some of the most remarkable centres of the ancient Mediterranean. Poseidonia was one of them. Later, the city came under Lucanian control and eventually became a Roman colony, receiving the name Paestum. And yet, standing there today, it is the Greek character of the place that overwhelms you.

The temples are impossible to ignore. They dominate the landscape not because they are surrounded by modern buildings or monuments, but precisely because they are not. They stand among fields, trees and Mediterranean vegetation. The landscape has not completely surrendered to the city. And perhaps that is why Paestum feels so powerful.

Paestum's three great Greek temples are among the best-preserved Doric temples anywhere in the ancient world. 

The building traditionally known as the Temple of Hera, the great temple traditionally called the Temple of Neptune, and the Temple of Athena form an extraordinary architectural ensemble. Their traditional names, however, should be treated with some caution. Archaeologists have debated the precise identities of the deities to whom the temples were dedicated, and the evidence does not always allow us to be certain. But perhaps that uncertainty makes them even more fascinating. Because what remains is not simply the name of a god. What remains is the physical expression of a civilisation. Columns. Stone. Proportion. Light. Geometry. Space. And an extraordinary understanding of how architecture can transform the relationship between human beings and the landscape.

The temples do not simply occupy the landscape. They converse with it. Claire and I spent more than three hours there. We sat beneath a large olive tree, close to one of the temples. I don't remember which one. But I remember the shade. I remember the heat. I remember the silence. And I remember looking at those stones and feeling something that is difficult to explain. It was not simply admiration for ancient architecture. It was something closer to pride. An external pride in what we were seeing. And an internal pride in what we are. Mediterranean. 

Proudly Mediterranean.

Because the Mediterranean is not merely a sea. It is a cultural space. A meeting place. A crossroads that has connected people for thousands of years. Its shores speak different languages, belong to different countries and have developed very different histories. And yet there are things that repeatedly connect them. The landscape. The light. The olive tree. The vine. The sea. The markets. The food. The architecture. The way people occupy public space. The sound of voices in the streets. The music. The relationship with death. The relationship with family. The extraordinary ability to sit around a table for hours. We may disagree about almost everything. But sometimes, beneath all those differences, there is something recognisable. Something Mediterranean.

We often look at maps and see borders. Ancient people saw routes. The sea that separates us today was also the sea that connected people yesterday. Greek ships crossed it. Phoenician ships crossed it. Roman ships crossed it. Merchants, sailors, soldiers, philosophers, migrants and travellers crossed it. Ideas crossed it. Religions crossed it. Recipes crossed it. Words crossed it. Music crossed it. Civilisations crossed it.  And they left traces of themselves on shores that today belong to completely different nations. That is why I have always found the concept of Mare Nostrum fascinating.

The Romans called the Mediterranean Mare Nostrum -"Our Sea"- after establishing control over much of its coastline. But perhaps today we should be careful with the possessive. It is not really our sea. It belongs to all the people who have lived around it. To Greeks and Italians. To Catalans and Sicilians. To Andalusians and Provençals. To Maltese and Tunisians. To Croats and Albanians. To Egyptians and Lebanese. To Turks and Cypriots. To countless peoples whose histories have been intertwined by this enormous blue space. The Mediterranean does not belong to one civilisation. It is one of the places where civilisations met. And Paestum is one of its most beautiful testimonies.

Perhaps this is why I feel that Paestum deserves to be remembered not merely as an archaeological site, but as a symbol of Hellenism. Hellenism is sometimes reduced to marble statues, philosophers and temples. But it was much more than that. It was a way of understanding the world. An extraordinary intellectual, artistic and cultural tradition that travelled far beyond mainland Greece. And southern Italy became one of its great homes.

Walking through Paestum, you realise that the Greek world was not something distant, confined to the Aegean. It was here. In Campania. On the shores of the Tyrrhenian Sea. Under the same Mediterranean sun that shines today. And perhaps that is what makes the experience so overwhelming. You are not simply looking at the past. You are looking at one of the foundations of the cultural landscape in which we still live.

I often think about that olive tree. There was nothing particularly monumental about it. It wasn't a temple. It wasn't a column. It wasn't a piece of sculpture. It was simply an olive tree. But it gave us shade. And for three hours, Claire and I sat beneath it looking at the temples. The irony is beautiful. The temples had survived for more than two thousand years. The olive tree belonged to the living landscape. And for a few hours, we occupied the space between them. Ancient stone behind us. Living tree above us. Mediterranean light everywhere.

It felt almost like being temporarily inserted into a very long story. A story that had begun long before us and would continue long after we had left.

That first sight of Paestum was, quite simply, a cultural slap in the face. A magnificent one. And perhaps I needed it. Because there is something wonderfully humbling about standing in front of something built by people who lived more than two thousand years ago and realising that their sense of proportion, beauty and permanence can still leave us speechless. We like to think of ourselves as modern. Connected. Advanced. Unprecedented. And then we arrive at Paestum. And a column looks at us. And suddenly our sense of importance becomes slightly smaller. Not insignificant. Just... smaller. And I think that is a good thing. Ancient places can teach us humility.

I wanted Claire to see a magical place. Instead, Paestum reminded both of us that magic does not always need to be invented. Sometimes it is already there. It has simply been waiting for us. We walked there through the heat, slightly lost, following the sun and trying to find the sea. And then a small pine grove opened. And beyond it stood the temples. Thousands of years old. Silent. Beautiful. Still standing. Claire looked at them and said: "Oh my God." I understood exactly what she meant. Because sometimes there are no better words.

Paestum is not simply a place where the past has survived. It is a place where the Mediterranean still speaks. Through its stone. Through its olive trees. Through its light. Through its silence. And through the people who continue to stand beneath that sun, looking at those temples and feeling, perhaps without even knowing why, that they are looking at something that belongs to all of us. Not because we own it. But because we are part of the same sea of history. The same light. The same cultural memory. The same Mediterranean.

Proudly Mediterranean.

And, just for a moment, very small beneath those enormous stones.

More information: Paestum Velia

Πάντων χρημάτων μέτρον ἐστὶν ἄνθρωπος

Man is the measure of all things.

Protagoras

MONASTERO DI SANTA CHIARA. FAITH & DEATH IN NAPOLI

Musings of The Grandma...

There are cities where religion is something you enter through the doors of a church. And then there is Napoli. In Napoli, religion is not necessarily inside the church. It is on the walls. It is in the streets. It is in the flowers placed beneath a tiny image of a saint. It is in the candles burning beside a photograph. It is in the voices of people talking to saints as if they were old friends. It is in miracles, promises, processions, superstition, music and football. And sometimes, perhaps inevitably in Napoli, it is also in death.

In the heart of the historic centre stands the monumental complex of Santa Chiara, one of the great medieval foundations of Napoli. The complex dates from the Angevin period and became one of the city's most important religious institutions. Its history is inseparable from the history of Napoli itself, and its architecture reflects the successive layers of cultures that have shaped the city. UNESCO includes Santa Chiara among the outstanding monuments of Napoli' historic centre.

But there is something about Santa Chiara that interests me even more than its architecture. It is what the place represents. Because if you want to understand Napoli, you have to understand that faith here has never been entirely obedient.

Napoli has its saints. Plenty of them. But the relationship between the city and its saints is wonderfully peculiar. The most famous is undoubtedly Saint Januarius -San Gennaro, the patron saint of Napoli.  His blood is traditionally kept in two glass ampoules in the Chapel of the Treasury of Napoli Cathedral, and on several occasions each year the faithful gather to witness the expected liquefaction of the relic. The phenomenon has generated centuries of devotion, debate and popular fascination.

But San Gennaro is not some distant celestial bureaucrat. He belongs to Napoli. And Napoli expects things from him. In one particularly extraordinary aspect of the tradition, if the blood does not liquefy, the reaction of the faithful has historically not always been one of quiet resignation. They can complain. They can scold him. They can even insult him. Because the relationship is personal. You are our saint. You are supposed to look after us.

Treccani describes this popular relationship with San Gennaro as one of the great contradictions of Neapolitan spirituality: the saint is expected to descend from his elevated position and share the difficulties, injustices and suffering of his city. That is Napoli. Even heaven is expected to participate in everyday life.

San Gennaro is not alone. The devotion to Padre Pio of Pietrelcina is enormous throughout Campania and southern Italy. There is something particularly Neapolitan about this form of spirituality: the saint is not simply an historical figure. He is someone you can ask for help. Someone whose photograph can be kept at home. Someone whose image can appear beside family photographs. Someone you can speak to. Someone who is expected to listen. The boundary between the sacred and the everyday becomes wonderfully blurred. And perhaps that is why Napoli has always produced such a powerful culture of popular devotion.

Religion here is not necessarily an abstract theological system. It is a relationship. And, of course, Napoli eventually solved the problem of finding a new deity. His name was Diego Armando Maradona. I remember this very well. When people discovered that I came from Barcelona and was a Barça supporter, they once took me to a tiny shrine on Via Benedetto Croce. I looked at the little altar. Flowers. Devotion. Hair. I asked: "Is it the hair of a saint? Padre Pio? A famous artist? Someone from the neighbourhood?" They looked at me as if I had just asked the most ridiculous question imaginable. "È Dio. È Diego Armando Maradona." It is God. Diego Armando Maradona. And I suddenly understood something about Napoli.

The Neapolitans did not necessarily need to separate the sacred from the profane. They could put them together. With flowers. And humour. And absolute sincerity. As a Catalan, I like to think that we had recognised the divinity of the number 10 before anybody else. And then, rather generously, we were given a MESSIah.

But there is another side to Neapolitan spirituality that fascinates me even more. The relationship with death. Napoli does not hide death particularly well. And perhaps that is why death seems less frightening here. You see death represented in art. You see memorials and images of the dead in the streets. You see funeral notices attached to walls announcing the death of a neighbour. You find catacombs beneath the city. You encounter the famous Neapolitan devotion to the anime pezzentelle, the forgotten souls of Purgatory.

The historic centre has an extraordinary subterranean dimension: Roman remains, catacombs and layers of earlier cities exist beneath the streets where modern Neapolitans live. UNESCO itself describes Napoli as a profoundly stratified city in which remains from different historical periods often lie remarkably close together.

The dead are not necessarily somewhere else. They are underneath us. And sometimes, metaphorically, they are beside us. Treccani has described this Neapolitan "underground" not only in archaeological terms, but also as a world of souls, spirits, superstition and relationships with the dead. That is a fascinating coincidence. Beneath Napoli there is an archaeological city. And beneath Napoli' culture there is another invisible city. The city of the dead. Superstition or spirituality? Perhaps we should be careful with the word superstition.

From the outside, it is easy to dismiss beliefs that do not fit neatly into institutional religion as irrational. But cultural anthropology tells us something more interesting. Superstitious practices often emerge where people seek forms of protection, certainty or personal connection that official religion does not necessarily provide. And Napoli has always had plenty of reasons to seek protection. Earthquakes. Volcanoes. Epidemics. Wars. Poverty. Sudden death. An unpredictable sea. An unpredictable city. And Vesuvius watching over everything.

Perhaps when life is uncertain, people develop a particularly intimate relationship with whatever they believe might protect them. A saint. A relic. A lucky number. A prayer. A dream. A dead relative. Or, occasionally, a footballer wearing number 10. 

This is why I would hesitate to describe Napoli simply as a religious city. It is more complicated than that. Napoli is devotional. It is superstitious. It is irreverent. It is deeply emotional. It is capable of laughing at its saints while loving them fiercely. It can place flowers before a dead neighbour's photograph and, a few metres away, fill the street with music and celebration. It can pray to San Gennaro and curse him in the same afternoon. It can worship Padre Pio. It can worship Maradona. And it can do all of this without necessarily seeing the contradictions. Perhaps because, in Napoli, contradictions are not problems. They are part of life.

And perhaps that is why today's visit to Santa Chiara has a meaning for The Grandma. Because one of the people who has accompanied her through so many of these Italian adventures is her friend Claire Fontaine.

Claire has been there for the rainstorms, the ferries, the Roman ruins, the impossible roads, the archaeological sites, the last-minute adventures and the occasions when we probably should have made more sensible decisions.

So today, on the feast of Saint Clare, this post is also a little tribute to her. To friendship. To memory. To the people who make places meaningful.

Perhaps this is what I love most about Napoli. It does not always draw the boundaries we expect. Between sacred and profane. Between faith and superstition. Between life and death. Between history and everyday life. Between a saint and a footballer. Between prayer and a joke. Between a church and the street outside it. Everything seems to overlap. And perhaps Santa Chiara is the perfect place from which to contemplate this strange, beautiful city.

Because Napoli has survived empires, dynasties, wars, earthquakes, eruptions and political upheavals. Its churches survived. Its streets survived. Its traditions survived. Its dead survived in memory. And its people continued to laugh, sing, argue, pray, celebrate and fall in love. This is Napoli. A city where faith does not always look like faith. Where death does not always mean absence. Where saints can be scolded. Where gods can wear number 10. And where, beneath the noise, the laughter and the extraordinary vitality of the streets, there is an ancient understanding: We are here for a while.

The dead were here before us. And those who come after us will inherit what we leave behind. Perhaps that is why Napoli celebrates life with such extraordinary intensity. Because it has always known how fragile it is. And perhaps that is why, after all these years, I still feel that when you leave Napoli... you have barely left before you already want to return.

Napoli lives by an unwritten rule: live and let live.

Perhaps that is why its spirituality feels so different. It is not a faith imposed from above, but a faith lived from below -in the streets, in the homes, in the neighbourhoods and in the hearts of its people.

More information: Monastero di Santa Chiara

Place your mind before the mirror of eternity! 
Place your soul in the brilliance of glory!

 

Chiara d'Assisi

HERCULANEUM, A ROMAN LESSON IN URBAN PLANNING

Musings of The Grandma...

There are places you visit for their monuments. There are places you visit for their beauty. And then there are places that make you look at the world around you differently. Herculaneum is one of them.

I first visited the ancient city many years ago, during my Erasmus years in Napoli. I returned on one of my trips with my friend Claire Fontaine, who has accompanied The Grandma on many of her adventures.

That particular visit began at Mount Vesuvius. By the time we came down from the volcano, it was already late afternoon. We decided to visit Herculaneum, assuming that the archaeological site would still be open. It wasn't. We had arrived just as it was closing.

There was no internet, no mobile phone, no online booking system and no way of checking opening hours at the touch of a screen. We simply stood there, rather disappointed, and explained to the man at the entrance that we had come from Barcelona and had no idea whether we would ever have another opportunity to return. He looked at us. Then he let us in. Not officially, not really. He told us that he had to finish closing the site, but that we could spend a few minutes looking from the entrance and take as many photographs as we wanted. We had film cameras with us, and after a long day at Vesuvius we had almost forgotten that we were carrying them. So we did something very different from what we would do today. We simply looked. We stood there and looked at Herculaneum. And I still remember that view. I can close my eyes even now and see the ancient city spread out below us.

From that elevated position, something caught our attention. The streets. We could identify the two fundamental directions of Roman urban planning: the cardines, running across the city, and the decumani, running in the other direction. The regularity of the plan was extraordinary.

The Archaeological Park itself describes Herculaneum's urban layout as remarkably regular, with the decumani running parallel to the coastline and the cardines perpendicular to them, defining rectangular residential blocks. We mentioned this to the man who had let us in. He clearly had not expected that observation. And then something even better happened. He asked us: "Are you in a hurry?" We told him that we had until the last Circumvesuviana train. So instead of spending fifteen minutes there, we spent a couple of hours. That evening became one of those encounters that you remember for decades. We talked about Roman cities. About streets. About orientation. About the relationship between public and private space. About how people moved through a city. About why a city is not simply a collection of buildings, but a system designed around the movement and needs of human beings. And, because we were in Napoli, the conversation somehow also included music. There were wonderful sfogliatellas, delicious ice cream and an unforgettable coffee.

It was not the visit we had planned. It was infinitely better.

The man who had been supposed to close the archaeological site had given us something much more valuable than a few extra minutes inside it. He had given us his time. I don't even know whether he is still with us. He must surely be retired by now. But I have never forgotten him. And this post is, in a way, my small tribute to him.

There is another reason why Herculaneum has always fascinated me. I come from Barcelona. And if you live in Barcelona, you live inside one of the most recognisable urban grids in Europe. The Eixample, designed by Ildefons Cerdà in the nineteenth century, was conceived as a rational extension of the city, based on a regular network of streets and blocks. Cerdà's plan was approved in 1859, and the expansion began after Barcelona's medieval walls were finally demolished.

The standard Eixample block measures approximately 133 metres by 133 metres, while the streets were designed to be around 20 metres wide. The famous chamfered corners were another characteristic element of Cerdà's design.

Of course, Herculaneum and Barcelona are not the same thing. They were separated by almost two thousand years. Cerdà did not simply copy a Roman city. But standing in Herculaneum and looking at its streets, it is impossible for someone from Barcelona not to recognise something familiar. The idea that a city can be planned rather than allowed to grow entirely at random. The idea that streets create relationships between buildings. That orientation matters. That movement matters. That public space matters. That the shape of a city influences the lives of the people who inhabit it.

And suddenly the Roman cardo and decumanus stop being archaeological vocabulary. They become something much more immediate. They become urban language. This is perhaps what makes Herculaneum so extraordinary. The archaeological remains do not merely tell us where people lived. They allow us to reconstruct, with remarkable detail, how they lived.

The site preserves residential and commercial areas, workshops, baths, public buildings and houses with gardens and terraces. The Archaeological Park emphasises precisely this extraordinary ability to reconstruct everyday life at a particular moment in the ancient world. And that is what I find most fascinating. Not the ruins themselves. The people who once walked between them. Someone opening a shop in the morning. Someone carrying food home. Children running through a street. Someone going to the baths. Someone meeting a friend. Someone complaining about the heat. Someone falling in love. Someone making plans for the following day.

People who had no idea that almost two thousand years later, someone would stand above their streets and try to imagine them. The city that disappeared Herculaneum, like Pompeii, was overwhelmed by the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79. But its fate was different. The volcanic material that buried the city preserved an extraordinary amount of organic material and architectural detail, giving archaeologists an exceptional window into Roman daily life. And there is something deeply moving about that. Because preservation is a strange thing. We celebrate it as archaeologists and historians. We marvel at the mosaics, the wooden objects, the houses, the streets and the inscriptions. But behind every preserved object there was once a living person. Every doorway was someone's doorway. Every street was someone's route home. Every house contained somebody's life.

That is why I find it difficult to look at Herculaneum simply as an archaeological site. It was a city. And cities are made of people.

I sometimes wonder what would have happened if that man had simply told us: "Sorry. We're closed." We would have gone away. We would probably have taken the train back to Napoli. And Herculaneum would have remained another archaeological site we had visited. Instead, he opened a door that was already supposed to be closed. He gave two young women from Barcelona a little of his time. And, without knowing it, he gave us a lesson that has stayed with me for decades. About Roman urbanism. About cities. About curiosity. And perhaps, above all, about generosity.

I don't remember his name. But I remember the city he helped us see. And whenever I walk through Barcelona, whenever I cross one of the long streets of the Eixample and look down the regular lines of buildings, I sometimes think about that evening in Herculaneum.

Two cities. Two very different worlds. Two very different moments in history. And between them, an idea that has survived for thousands of years: A city is not only the place where we live. It is the way we organise our lives together. And somewhere in Herculaneum, beneath the streets and houses that Vesuvius buried, there is still the trace of a city that knew that very well.

More information: Herculaneum

 

The extraordinary greatness of the Roman Empire 
manifests itself above all in three things: 
the aqueducts, the paved roads, 

and the construction of the drains.

Dionysius of Halicarnassus

'IO PARTO, ADIO. TORNA A SURRIENTO, FAMME CAMPÀ...'

Musings of The Grandma...

There are places you visit because they are beautiful. And then there are places that somehow make you want to return before you have even left. Surriento belongs to the second category. 

Perched dramatically above the Bay of Napoli, on a coastline carved into cliffs and terraces, Surriento seems to have been designed specifically to make human beings stop walking, look at the sea and say: Wow. 

And then, almost inevitably, someone starts singing. Torna a Surriento…

Because in Surriento, it is almost impossible not to think of that famous Neapolitan song. But Sorrento is much more than a beautiful view. It is history, music, villas, gardens, cliffs, citrus trees, grand hotels, narrow roads and the Mediterranean in almost every direction. And, in my case, it is also the memory of being hit by a wave of dirty rainwater thrown at us by a luxury car. But let me start at the beginning.

Surriento occupies a spectacular position on the Surriento Peninsula, overlooking the Bay of Napoli. The geography is responsible for much of its character. The town sits on a high plateau above steep cliffs, while the coastline below drops dramatically towards the Tyrrhenian Sea. Roads wind down towards the water, often through slopes and bends that seem to have been designed to test both drivers and passengers. The reward is extraordinary.

From Surriento, the panorama opens towards the Bay of Napoli, Mount Vesuvius and the islands scattered across the horizon. It is one of those landscapes where the sea does not simply form the background. You see it between buildings, beneath terraces, beyond gardens and at the end of streets. And then there are the villas.

Some of Surriento's historic residences and hotels reveal just how long this coastline has attracted wealthy travellers, aristocrats and people looking for somewhere extraordinarily beautiful to live or spend their holidays. Surriento became an important destination during the era of the Grand Tour, when European aristocrats, artists and intellectuals travelled through Italy in search of classical culture, landscapes and inspiration. It is not difficult to understand why they stopped here.

Even today, you can look at the view and understand immediately. And then there are the lemons. Huge Surriento lemons. They seem almost ridiculously large compared with the lemons you normally find elsewhere. Citrus cultivation has been deeply connected with the landscape and economy of the Sorrento Peninsula for centuries, and the local lemon has become one of the symbols of the area. You find lemons in gardens, markets, restaurants, desserts, drinks and, of course, limoncello. Sorrento doesn't merely grow lemons. It has turned the lemon into part of its identity. And somehow, against that blue Mediterranean background, everything tastes even more intensely Mediterranean.

Among Surriento's historic hotels, the Grand Hotel Excelsior Vittoria occupies a particularly fascinating place. The hotel was founded in 1834 and has remained in the hands of the Fiorentino family for five generations. Over its long history, it welcomed an extraordinary list of guests, including artists, politicians, royalty and musicians. One of them was Errico Caruso. The great Italian tenor stayed at the hotel, and his connection with Sorrento became part of the hotel's history. Today, the hotel even has a suite bearing his name. And this is where Surriento and music become almost inseparable. Because once you are surrounded by that landscape, it is very difficult not to understand why someone would write a song asking Surriento to come back.

Torna a Surriento means 'Come back to Sorrento'. The song was written by the brothers Ernesto and Giambattista De Curtis, and became one of the most famous songs of the Neapolitan tradition. It was subsequently performed by some of the greatest voices of the twentieth century, including Enrico Caruso.

There is a fascinating story surrounding its creation and the visit of Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Zanardelli to Sorrento in 1902. The song became associated with the hope that the politician would help improve the town's infrastructure and return to enjoy its beauty. The precise history of the song's composition is more complicated than the popular legend suggests, but its connection with Surriento became permanent.

And honestly? You don't need to know any of that to understand the song. You only have to stand in Surriento. Look at the cliffs. Look at the sea. Look at Vesuvius in the distance. Listen to the voices around you. And suddenly the title makes perfect sense. Come back to Surriento. The funny thing is that Surriento doesn't really need to ask. You are already thinking about coming back.

I have visited Surriento twice. The first time, the region was experiencing a heatwave. Not the pleasant Mediterranean kind of warmth. The other kind. The kind that makes you feel as though the air itself has forgotten how to move. It was suffocating. The second time, I returned with Claire Fontaine, a friend who accompanies The Grandma on many of her travels. And Surriento had apparently decided that one weather extreme was not enough. We were hit by one of those extraordinary August thunderstorms that arrive suddenly and make you feel as if the sky is collapsing on top of you. One minute everything was fine. The next minute, the heavens opened. We had absolutely nothing to protect ourselves from the rain. No umbrellas. No raincoats. Nothing. We were walking down one of those winding roads that descend towards the sea, trying to avoid puddles and, more importantly, trying not to fall. And then we saw it. A shelter. Four metres away. We were almost saved. Almost. At precisely that moment, a high-end car came down the road. It skidded right in front of us. And the tyres sent an enormous wave of water -more than a metre high, or at least that is how it felt- straight over us. We were completely soaked. And dirty. The car stopped. For one glorious second, I thought the driver might actually apologise. Instead, he reversed. He looked at us. He laughed. And drove away. I have never forgotten that face. Or that car. Or the feeling of standing there, drenched from head to toe, looking at each other and wondering whether to laugh or commit a crime. So now, whenever I hear Torna a Surriento, there is a small part of my brain that remembers the magnificent cliffs, the Mediterranean, the lemons, the villas and the beautiful Surriento...

...and another part that remembers that idiot in the expensive car.

Perhaps this is what travelling really is. Beautiful landscapes mixed with completely ridiculous memories. And yet, I would go back tomorrow. That is the strange thing about Surriento. Even after the heatwave. Even after the thunderstorm. Even after being hit by a metre-high wall of dirty water. I would return. Tomorrow. Without hesitation. Because Surriento has something that photographs cannot quite capture. It is not only the cliffs. It is not only the villas. It is not only the gardens or the lemons. It is the feeling of being somewhere suspended between land and sea, between history and the present, between the enormous landscape of the Bay of Napoli and the tiny details of everyday Mediterranean life. It is the sound of a song that has been asking people to return for more than a century. It is the smell of citrus. The colour of the sea. The impossible roads. The gardens hanging above the cliffs. The memory of Caruso. The sound of Neapolitan voices. And, sometimes, an August storm that arrives without warning. Surriento is not perfect. Perhaps that is precisely why I love it. Because the places we remember most vividly are rarely the ones where everything went according to plan.

They are the places where something happened. Something unexpected. Something ridiculous. Something beautiful. Something that stays with you. And Surriento stayed with me. I haven't even finished writing this, and I already want to go back. Torna a Surriento. Come back to Surriento. I think I will.

More information: Errico Caruso, Neapolitan Language in Opera

Ma num mme lassà
Non darme sto tormiento
Torna a Surriento
Famme campà.

But do not leave me,
Do not cause me this torment;
Return to Sorrento,
Let me live.

 Ernesto and Giambattista De Curtis

JELLYFISH, INHABITANTS OF THE MEDITERRANEAN SEA

It has been another sweltering night, so The Grandma has got up early and has headed to the Port of Barcelona -where Claire Fontaine was waiting for her- to board her small boat, and after slathering on sunscreen, they have sailed 25 nautical miles (about 46 km) to Sitges -that fascinating town in the Garraf county- intending to spend the day enjoying its beaches, cuisine, beauty and its indiano mansions, which recall the history of Catalans overseas.

Tomorrow morning, The Grandma has to work in Castelldefels, so they will set off on the return journey early. They will stop at Port Ginesta, and while The Grandma attends her training session, Claire will enjoy the beaches of the neighbouring town -this time, in the Baix Llobregat area, before returning to Barcelona.

During the trip, they have enjoyed the stunning spectacle of the Barcelona coastline as seen from the sea and they have been accompanied by some very special travel companions: dozens of jellyfish. Taking advantage of the high temperatures and sea currents, these creatures have been appearing in large numbers recently along the beaches of el Barcelonès, el Baix Llobregat, and el Garraf areas. 

Every summer, thousands of people visiting the Mediterranean coast are surprised -or alarmed- by the appearance of jellyfish drifting close to the shore. Beaches may be temporarily closed, warning flags raised, and swimmers advised to stay out of the water. Yet jellyfish are not newcomers to the Mediterranean. They have inhabited these waters for millions of years and play an important role in marine ecosystems.

So why do they suddenly appear in such large numbers along our beaches? Are there really more jellyfish than in the past, or are we simply noticing them more? The answer lies in a fascinating combination of ocean currents, weather conditions, marine ecology, climate change, and human activity.

Jellyfish are among the oldest animals on Earth. Their ancestors appeared more than 500 million years ago, long before dinosaurs walked the planet. Despite their simple appearance, jellyfish are highly successful marine organisms that have survived multiple mass extinctions.

The Mediterranean Sea hosts dozens of jellyfish species, although only a handful are commonly encountered by beachgoers. Along the Catalan coast and much of the western Mediterranean, the most familiar species include the mauve stinger (Pelagia noctiluca), the fried-egg jellyfish (Cotylorhiza tuberculata), the barrel jellyfish (Rhizostoma pulmo), and the compass jellyfish (Chrysaora hysoscella). Each species has different habits, preferred temperatures, and ecological roles. Some possess powerful stings, while others are almost harmless to humans.

To understand why jellyfish suddenly appear in large numbers, it is important to understand their life cycle. Most jellyfish alternate between two completely different forms. One stage is a tiny polyp attached to rocks, harbour walls, shells, or other hard surfaces. The other is the familiar free-swimming jellyfish, known as the medusa.

When environmental conditions become favourable -particularly water temperature and food availability- the polyps reproduce, releasing many young jellyfish into the sea. Within weeks or months, these tiny organisms grow into adult jellyfish capable of reproducing themselves. This means that what people observe on beaches is only the final stage of a much longer biological process that has often begun months earlier.

Jellyfish are surprisingly poor swimmers. Although they can pulsate their umbrella-shaped bodies to move vertically or make small adjustments, they cannot swim against strong currents. In practice, they are largely transported by the sea itself.

The Mediterranean is a dynamic environment where surface currents constantly move water masses across large distances. These currents can carry jellyfish dozens or even hundreds of kilometres from where they originated.

Along the Catalan coast, prevailing winds often determine whether jellyfish remain offshore or are pushed towards beaches. When persistent onshore winds blow for several days, surface waters carrying jellyfish gradually move landward. As a result, beaches that were completely free of jellyfish one day may experience large numbers only a few days later. Conversely, offshore winds may quickly remove them from coastal waters.

Weather conditions also play an important role. Strong storms may break up offshore jellyfish aggregations and redistribute them across coastal waters. Changes in atmospheric pressure, wave action, and wind direction can all influence where jellyfish eventually appear. Interestingly, many large beach strandings occur after periods of calm weather followed by changing winds. This explains why jellyfish appearances can seem unpredictable even though they often follow well-understood oceanographic processes.

Climate change is one of the factors receiving the greatest scientific attention. The Mediterranean is warming faster than many other seas around the world. Sea surface temperatures have increased significantly during recent decades, and marine heatwaves are becoming increasingly frequent.

Warmer waters can benefit certain jellyfish species in several ways:

-Longer reproductive seasons.

-Faster growth rates.

-Higher survival of juvenile stages.

-Expansion into areas that were previously too cold.

However, scientists emphasize that climate change alone does not explain every jellyfish bloom. It is one contributing factor among several interacting processes.

Jellyfish feed mainly on zooplankton, fish eggs, fish larvae, and tiny crustaceans. When plankton populations increase, jellyfish have abundant food available, allowing them to grow rapidly and reproduce successfully. Nutrient-rich waters -sometimes enriched by river runoff or human activities- can stimulate plankton growth, indirectly benefiting jellyfish populations. This ecological chain illustrates how changes at the microscopic level may eventually become visible to beach visitors.

Another important factor may be overfishing. Many commercial fish species consume plankton or compete directly with jellyfish for food. Others prey on juvenile jellyfish. When fish populations decline due to intensive fishing, competition decreases and jellyfish may gain an ecological advantage. Although the relationship is complex and varies between regions, many marine biologists consider overfishing one of the possible drivers behind increasing jellyfish blooms in some Mediterranean areas.

Modern coastlines contain many artificial structures such as marinas, breakwaters, piers, and harbour walls. These hard surfaces provide ideal places for jellyfish polyps to attach and reproduce. As coastal development expands, the number of suitable habitats for polyps also increases. This hidden stage of the life cycle often goes unnoticed because polyps measure only a few millimetres and resemble tiny sea anemones.

No two summers are exactly alike. A year with abundant jellyfish usually results from several favourable conditions occurring simultaneously:

-Successful reproduction during spring.

-Warm sea temperatures.

-Plenty of plankton.

-Persistent winds carrying jellyfish towards the coast.

-Ocean currents concentrating them near beaches.

If one or more of these factors are absent, jellyfish numbers may remain relatively low. This is why one summer may experience widespread blooms while the following year has very few jellyfish despite similar temperatures.

This remains one of marine biology's most debated questions: Are jellyfish increasing?

Some long-term studies suggest that jellyfish blooms have become more frequent in certain regions of the Mediterranean. Other researchers argue that natural population cycles have always existed and that improved monitoring, satellite observations, and increased public reporting make blooms appear more common than they once seemed. Most scientists agree on one point: local increases are real, but there is no universal trend affecting every part of the world's oceans equally.

Despite their reputation, jellyfish are valuable members of marine ecosystems. They serve as food for loggerhead sea turtles, ocean sunfish, some seabirds, and numerous fish species. Young fish often shelter among their tentacles for protection from predators. When jellyfish die, their bodies sink to the seabed, transporting organic matter that supports deep-sea communities. Rather than being merely a nuisance for swimmers, jellyfish contribute to the health and complexity of marine food webs.

Complete elimination of jellyfish from Mediterranean beaches is neither possible nor desirable. Instead, scientists focus on monitoring environmental conditions and predicting blooms using satellite observations, oceanographic models, weather forecasts, and citizen science initiatives.

In Catalonia, organizations monitor jellyfish throughout the bathing season, helping local authorities provide timely information to the public. By understanding how currents, winds, climate, ecosystems, and human activities interact, we gain a clearer picture of why jellyfish appear on our shores.

Far from being mysterious invaders, jellyfish are natural inhabitants of the Mediterranean, carried by the sea and responding to environmental changes. Their seasonal arrival reminds us that even seemingly simple marine creatures are part of an intricate ecological system whose balance increasingly depends on how humans care for the oceans.

More information: Orca

 A jellyfish, if you watch it long enough, 
begins to look like a heart beating. 
It doesn't matter what kind... 
like a ghost heart 
-a heart you can see right through, 
right into some other world.

Ali Benjamin