Catalan Bay

The Rock's eastern face drops sheer to a surprise: Catalan Bay, the fishing village founded by Genoese settlers whose descendants - the Caleta community - kept their cove's identity through the centuries, pastel houses stacked behind a crescent of sand with the limestone wall rising a monumental backdrop. The Virgin's shrine watches from the rocks, seafood terraces serve the day's catch metres from the water, and September's Our Lady of Sorrows procession carries the village's patroness to the sea in the community's cherished tradition. It is Gibraltar at its most Mediterranean - five minutes and a world from Main Street.

History

The older name La Caleta, "the cove", appears in a royal dispatch of 6 March 1634, while Catalan Bay is thought to recall some 350 Catalan followers of Charles of Austria who landed here in the Anglo-Dutch capture of Gibraltar on 4 August 1704, some of whom settled afterwards. The village itself was peopled by Genoese fishermen, part of a wider settlement along the Rock's eastern coast in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and Genoese was spoken in La Caleta well into the nineteenth century; in that century only fishermen with a governor's permit could live here, and most families today, the caleteños, descend from them (Wikipedia, Catalan Bay).

Highlights

• The pastel cove - village houses under the great cliff.
• The beach crescent - sand beneath the monumental backdrop.
• The seafood terraces - the catch at water's edge.
• The September procession - the patroness carried to the sea.

When to go

May to October for swimming season - the east side catches morning sun and afternoon cliff shade; the September feast is the village's proudest day.

Good to know

The beach is small and summer-popular - space goes early on fine weekends; parking is scarcer still, making the bus the wise approach. Cliff shade cools afternoons sooner than sun-worshippers expect.

Nearby

The east-side beaches, Gorham's viewing platform and the town through the tunnel.