Portbou () is a town in the Alt Empordà

county A county is a geographic region of a country used for administrative or other purposes Chambers Dictionary, L. Brookes (ed.), 2005, Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd, Edinburgh in certain modern nations. The term is derived from the Old French ...

, in the Province of Girona,

Catalonia Catalonia (; ca, Catalunya ; Aranese Occitan: ''Catalonha'' ; es, Cataluña ) is an autonomous community of Spain, designated as a '' nationality'' by its Statute of Autonomy. Most of the territory (except the Val d'Aran) lies on the nort ...

, Spain. It has a population of people (). Portbou is located near the French

border Borders are usually defined as geographical boundaries, imposed either by features such as oceans and terrain, or by political entities such as governments, sovereign states, federated states, and other subnational entities. Political borders c ...

in the Costa Brava region, and frequently serves as a dropping off point for SNCF trains coming from Cerbère in France. Portbou was a small but important point for the Republicans during the

Spanish Civil War The Spanish Civil War ( es, Guerra Civil Española)) or The Revolution ( es, La Revolución, link=no) among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War ( es, Cuarta Guerra Carlista, link=no) among Carlists, and The Rebellion ( es, La Rebelión, link ...

, as it was one of the few places from where they could get supplies from abroad. Portbou is also where

German philosopher German philosophy, here taken to mean either (1) philosophy in the German language or (2) philosophy by Germans, has been extremely diverse, and central to both the analytic and continental traditions in philosophy for centuries, from Gottfried ...

Walter Benjamin Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin (; ; 15 July 1892 – 26 September 1940) was a German Jewish philosopher, cultural critic and essayist. An eclectic thinker, combining elements of German idealism, Romanticism, Western Marxism, and Jewish ...

committed suicide and was buried in 1940. There is a monument in his honor, by Dani Karavan.

Transport

The Portbou railway station is a

break-of-gauge With railways, a break of gauge occurs where a line of one track gauge (the distance between the rails, or between the wheels of trains designed to run on those rails) meets a line of a different gauge. Trains and rolling stock generally cannot ...

station. It contains a major rail freight transfer facility, and a large passenger station built to support customs and immigration. The customs and immigration facilities are no longer required as both France and Spain are Schengen Area members. A pair of railway tunnels connect Portbou with Cerbère in France. One tunnel contains a standard gauge track, and one an

Iberian gauge Iberian gauge ( es, ancho ibérico, trocha ibérica, pt, bitola ibérica) is a track gauge of , most extensively used by the railways of Spain and Portugal. This is the second-widest gauge in regular use anywhere in the world. The Indian gauge, , ...

track. Local Spanish trains either terminate at Portbou or run through to Cerbère, where the Iberian gauge tracks ends, and French trains either terminate at Cerbère or continue to Portbou. Portbou has a

TALGO Talgo (officially Patentes Talgo, SAU) is a Spanish manufacturer of intercity, standard, and high-speed passenger trains. Corporate history TALGO, an abbreviation of Tren Articulado Ligero Goicoechea Oriol (English: ''Lightweight articulated tr ...

Automatic Track Gauge Changeover System facility, for use by through trains between France and Spain. The road connection to Cerbère in France is via the Coll dels Balitres (163 m). This route is longer (7 km) than the rail route (1.8 km). The

GR 92 The GR 92 is part of the extensive GR footpath network of paths, tracks and trails in Spain. It will eventually run the length of the Mediterranean coast of Spain, from Portbou, on the border with France to Tarifa, the most southerly point of Sp ...

long distance footpath, which roughly follows the length of the Mediterranean coast of Spain, starts at Portbou. Stage 1 links southwards to Llançà, a distance of .

Demography

Notable people

* Clemente Cerdeira Fernández, (1887–1947), Spanish Arabist and diplomat * Àngels Santos Torroella, Catalan painter

References

* Panareda Clopés, Josep Maria; Rios Calvet, Jaume; Rabella Vives, Josep Maria (1989). ''Guia de Catalunya'', Barcelona: Caixa de Catalunya. (Spanish). (Catalan).

External links

Official website

Government data pages
{{Authority control Municipalities in Alt Empordà Populated places in Alt Empordà France–Spain border crossings