Empordaguia

Few Empordanese settlements can boast of such immense historic adaptability as Roses. Throughout its history, it has reinvented itself as if it were a prolific and complex phoenix.

The history of Roses can be equally divided into epochs of distinction and of decadence that have marked its appearance and its inhabitants. Its foundation under the aegis of phokaians from Marseilles in the 5th C. cannot yet be firmly established from the superb archaeological remains that are preserved within the renaissance walls of the Citadel. Myth assigns this foundation to an expedition from Rhodes before the first Olympic games (776 B.C.) After taking an active part in Mediterranean trade during the late classic antiquity, decline during the late Roman period led to change in the urban characteristics of Roses; it became a Visigoth fort.

The feudalization of the land around the Monastery of Saint Mary of Roses – one of the iconic monuments of the Empordà – led to a long period of social and economic growth. Roses became one of the main ports of a Catalonia that dreamt of economic control over the Mediterranean. Catalans sailed from Roses seeking conquests and honours. But the medieval crisis that started in 1348 brought hard times that were alleviated in part by Occitan immigration.

The construction of the Ciutadella (citadel) stressed the military role of Roses that would endure throughout the modern age and shaped the character of the town until the end of the French War. Soldiers, wars, and the destruction of social and economic frameworks marked an epoch that would only come to an end with the economic changes of the 18th C. and the liberal revolution of the 19th C. After 1840 Roses once again responded to its maritime and commercial calling and became one of the main ports for coastal trade in Catalonia.

But commercial contacts around the world were not alone in giving the town of Roses a cosmopolitan air. Summer vacationers also stamped their mark on local development until the outbreak of the civil war (1936-1939). The plan to demolish the walls, the reorganization of the town, and a number of civil initiatives that originated in the new ideological order were all part of the modernization of the country. Yet the last reinvention of Roses was still to come, starting in the 1960s: Mass tourism, democratic but cheap, schematic but poor, brought fundamental change to the appearance of Roses, both in quantity and in quality. New developments on marginal coastal areas and disconnected from the traditional urban core have created a new and unexpected Roses that is still struggling to find cohesion. Without doubt this will be but one more link in a long historical chain. Roses will again reinvent itself and reaffirm its identity as the phoenix of the Empordà.// JOSEP MARIA VALLES RUSET