Exploring the Spanish fishing village of Sitges

"There it is," says Gemma, who's taking me for a walking tour around the former Spanish fishing village of Sitges, "The last standing fisherman's home." I yank my neck towards her finger and barely make out a squat, single storey home facing the placid sea. The antiquated fisherman's home stands forlornly like a broken tooth. Sandwiched between stylish buildings five odd storeys high, it's the last man standing in a land of former seafarers.

Propped on the Mediterranean Coast, just south of Barcelona, Sitges is separated from the city by the Garraf Massif, a calcareous rock mountain, and literally means 'deep hole.' In the Middle Ages, it skirted the country's Arab and Christian regions, yet owed allegiance to none. No man's land over the centuries began to develop, nets being cast in the ocean by most dwellers. But only in the late 19th and early 20th century Sitges blossomed. The Americanos, Sitgetanos who'd earned fortunes in Cuba and Puerto Rico, returned to the hamlet to construct imposing homes designed straight from the annals of fantasy. The palm trees brought back from the colonies dot Sitges, corporal reminders of those far off lands the Americanos once lived in.

It wasn't only the nouveau rich immigrant who changed the complexion of Sitges. Painter and writer Santiago Rusinol fell in love with the city of anglers and moved here, ushering to the boondocks the Modernisme or Catalan Modernism movement, immortalised in architecture, and brought with him a touch of genteel culture.

Far from its fishing origins, today Sitges oozes with bohemian counterculture, a spark fuelled in the '60s during the dictatorship. Millionaire mansions dot the shoreline, nudist beaches skim the seas, clubs have sprouted across its girth, and it holds pride in being one of the most gay-friendly regions in the world.

Strolling from the train station to the sea, I wandered through narrow pathways with road names spelt out on colorful tiled signs tacked up high on buildings. Gemma pointed out thick lines painted outside homes in the old quarter, running parallel to the roads, "Blue meant it was a fisherman's house, brown a farmer's," speaking of the tradition.

Americano residences reared high over the others so the merchants could climb atop the towers and watch the shipments of wine and coffee and more sail safely out of the harbour. At the main square, the Clock House, a towering example of the latter, is the most distinct of modernist homes, its spire atop a ceramic encrusted tower, piercing the skies.

As we continued forward, a warm balmy breeze from the yet unseen sea washed over the city, funneling through the silent Raco de la Calma, aptly named the quiet corner. On one side was the Maricel Complex - a museum and palace, the latter a clutch of fisherman's cottages put together. Maricel, meaning the sea and the sky, was a palace built by American millionaire Charles Deering. An image of the sun dipping into the ocean was frozen for posterity on a ceramic tile. On the other end was the other the Cau Ferrat Museum, the lovely home and studio of Rusinol. From here, we walked on to La Punta, a point where I could see the beach bereft of umbrellas in the nippy spring weather. The esplanade was littered with beach bars, known quaintly in Spain as chiringuitos, named after the original one on the beachfront; and wandering tourists. And of course, rows of palm trees, tall and knobbly, their mop like heads in stark contrast to the pino, bushy Mediterranean pine trees. Beyond this was the aquamarine sea with nary a boat breaking the waves.