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This is a route along the places in Figueres where Salvador Dalí once lived, studied, or strolled, and where reminders of his childhood, youth, and old age are kept.
Certainly Figueres wouldn’t be what it is today if Salvador Dalí hadn’t been born. His museum is the second most popular in Spain (after the Prado), and it brings money and life to town. Nor would Salvador Dalí have been the same if he hadn’t been born in this Empordanese town with the strong winds that mark the character of its inhabitants. We must remember that Figueres is also the birthplace of Dali’s illustrious contemporaries such as the poet Fages de Climent, the politician Miravitlles, or the watercolour painter Reig, among others.
This walk is an urban itinerary along streets and squares that belong to Salvador Dali’s daily and social life. He lived in Figures as a child, in his youth, and also in old age, after living in Paris and New York.
We set off from the Teatre Municipal Jardí, built in 1914. Dalí wanted to go to the cinema from a small age and was always interested in this art; he later worked with Luis Buñuel on the film Un chien andalou. His idols were the Marx brothers, especially Harpo, the most surrealist. He once sent Harpo a harp with barbed-wire cords. Harpo answered sending him a photo with bandaged fingers. We continue along the Rambla of Figueres, of which Dalí said it was as long as life and as wide as the world. This Rambla joins Medieval Figueres with the new town, and in the early 20th C. it became the centre, with its hotels and cafes. It was the place where citizens strolled and chatted, and where markets and fairs were held. In the 1950s, Dalí would sit on the terrace of the Astoria watching the Rambla and its people. Many people remember his eccentricities in Figueres, such as wearing a hair clip in his moustache, an omelette as a pocket-handkerchief, or a fur coat in summer. The Museu del Joguet shows the “Marquina teddy bear” that belonged to Salvador and Anna Maria Dalí. Its name is due to the friendship that united the Dalí children with Lluis Marquina, the son of Eduardo Marquina and Mercedes Pitxot, friends of the family from Cadaqués. We now enter the Carrer Monturiol to see the house where Dalí was born. This is the street of the geniuses: Dalí, Monturiol, Fages de Climent, or Deulofeu. There is an epigram on the façade of the house of the poet Carles Fages de Climent: “ In Monturiol street, the geniuses were born. I, Salvador Dalí, and Monturiol.” We continue on Perelada Street and cross the Carrer dels Tints, where Dali’s first art school used to be. In 1961 the city wanted to honour Salvador Dalí, and the first part was to be a surrealist bullfight. Dalí wanted a helicopter to drop a bull into the bay of Roses as a gift to Neptune, but the pilot refused because of the strong Tramuntana wind and the risk of the operation. In fact, the most important event of that day was the announcement of the creation of then Teatre Museu Dalí opposite the Sant Pere church. Dalí gave three reasons for wanting his museum to be in the old municipal theatre: First, this is where he held his first show when he was 14 years old. Second, he was baptized in the Sant Pere church. And third, it was a theatre, and he defined himself as a basically theatrical painter. With the opening of the Teatre Museu in 1974, Dalí made one of his dreams come true.//
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