Fancy a dip?

This is the public safareig in Castello D'Empuries.

Until very recently these public washing places, for clothes rather than bodies were the Catalan equivalent of the Glasgow steamy, a place of information, news and gossip.

I say recently, but in fact here in Serinya there are still daily users of the safareig , perhaps because the water supple apart from being fiercely expensive is full of calcium and very hard. The stream is more likely rainwater and so softer. There are some neighbours who wash in a washing machine but rinse in the stream.

This area in Castello dates back to the 15 C, with later additions . Unfortunately as you can see not much attention has been paid to what lies behind this rather fine area, so an aluminium clad sports hall shoulders its way in in a rather ugly fashion.