Castelldefels

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Castelldefels municipality
coat of arms Map of Spain
Castelldefels coat of arms
Castelldefels (Spain)
Finland road sign 311 (1994-2020) .svg
Basic data
Autonomous Community : Catalonia
Province : Barcelona
Comarca : Baix Llobregat
Coordinates 41 ° 17 ′  N , 1 ° 59 ′  E Coordinates: 41 ° 17 ′  N , 1 ° 59 ′  E
Height : 3  msnm
Area : 12.87 km²
Residents : 67.004 (Jan. 1, 2019)
Population density : 5,206.22 inhabitants / km²
Municipality number  ( INE ): 08056
Nearest airport : El Prat de Llobregat (Barcelona)
administration
Official language : Castilian , Catalan
Mayor : Candela López Tagliafico
Website : www.castelldefels.cat
Location of the municipality
Localització de Castelldefels.png

Castelldefels is a coastal town about 20 km southwest of Barcelona on the Costa del Garraf and belongs to the Barcelona metropolitan area . On January 1, 2019, Castelldefels had 67,004 inhabitants.

Location and geographical structure

The town hall of Castelldefels

The flat land between the Mediterranean Sea and the mountain range that Barcelona has space tapers more and more to the south and ends at Castelldefels - there the mountains come up to the sea and form a steep coast from Garraf to Sitges . Castelldefels is the southernmost of a group of villages that have a town center inland along this mountain range and a stretch of beach on the coast. These are, besides Castelldefels, Gavà and Viladecans . While the beach part of Gavà and Viladecans mainly consists of campsites and private apartment complexes, the beach part of Castelldefels consists of a mixture of bungalows, private apartment complexes and isolated hotels and forms a pine forest in the direction of Gavà, called La Pineda , in which the houses are cleverly integrated, partly built around individual trees. On this very long, extensive stretch of beach in Castelldefels, on Passeig Marítim at the corner of Avinguda dels Banys (pedestrian zone), near the Playafels hotel, there is an urban core with shops and restaurants.

history

Castelldefels Castle (view from Garraf Nature Park )

The history of the castle and the church of Castelldefels go back to the year 996 AD, although the castle was initially just a defensive tower that had the purpose of protecting the church. The castle, whose name became the place name, was initially called Castrum Felix , which later changed to Castelló de Fidels . Archaeologists found remains of various cultures on the site of the church of Santa Maria del Castell by the castle, including a cistern from the Iberian era and a cippus . Excavations from Roman times can now be viewed - under glass - inside this church. Remains of two-storey houses from Roman times were also found on the castle hill.

climate

Castelldefels has the following average temperatures:

  • Spring: 18 ° C,
  • Summer: 26 ° C,
  • Autumn: 20 ° C,
  • Winter: 10 ° C.

Average sea temperatures:

  • Min. In February: 12.7 ° C
  • Max. In July: 25.7 ° C
  • Average annual temperature: 18.6 ° C

population

Population development

Castelldefels had 13,219 inhabitants in 1970. In 2009 the city already had 62,314 inhabitants, of which 23.2% were foreigners. 53% of the foreign residents came from other EU countries, 32% from South America, 6% from Africa, 5% from Asia and 4% from North and Central America.

Prominent residents

Education and Research

Universities and research institutions of the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya in Castelldefels:

  • Escola Politècnica Superior de Castelldefels
  • Escola Superior d'Agricultura de Barcelona
  • Parc Mediterrani de la Tecnologia

traffic

The old town centers of Castelldefels, Gavà and Viladecans are lined up along the mountains on a country road that leads through the industrial areas on the Llobregat to Barcelona. In parallel, runs a line of RENFE that the station in the center of Castelldefels Castelldefels and at the south end of the beach portion of the breakpoint Playa de Castelldefels has. On June 23, 2010, a serious train accident occurred at this stop when the Alaris (No. 01202) Alicante - Barcelona-Sants caught a large group of people crossing the tracks to the beach instead of using an underpass. Twelve people were killed and 14 injured. There were no injuries in the high-speed train, which came to a halt after a few hundred meters.

The beach districts of Castelldefels, Gavà and Viladecans are located on the Autovia de Castelldefels , which runs past the airport and continues from Plaça d'Espanya as Gran Via , one of the main traffic axes, across Barcelona. Since the 1990s, the third traffic axis has been a motorway past Castelldefels to the south. The Autovía de Castelldefels , which never reached the standards of European motorways and has always been used like a motorway, was notorious for decades as one of the most dangerous racetracks in Spain, because it was an inadequate substitute for a left turn and caused accidents again and again due to unauthorized, forced left turns happened. The number of solid center lines gradually grew to four. This was later mitigated by a traffic light-controlled intersection and then by an overpass at Castelldefels and another at Gavà.

In terms of boat traffic, Castelldefels used to have to be content with the Club Nautico , with a swath of buoys in which boats were allowed to go to the beach. As a result of the 1992 Olympic Games , Castelldefels now also has a marina at the southern end, where the rocky coast begins .

As a further accompanying phenomenon in the run-up to the Olympic Games, the streets in the area of ​​the beach were renovated. For decades they had been deep trenches full of rubble and debris, from which the sewer shafts protruded knee-high in anticipation of a future road surface, and were deeply under water every time after the frequent summer thunderstorms.

tourism

Castelldefels Beach

Until the 1980s, Castelldefels was a popular holiday destination for tourists from all over Europe, who particularly appreciated the convenient location to Barcelona and the 100 to 200 meter wide, spacious beach. The tourist infrastructure of the beach part of Castelldefels was supported by family hotels, many of which later either had to give up or sell to large hotel chains due to the lack of foreign tourists, as well as apartments that were partly operated and rented out by Germans. All services for foreign holidaymakers that went beyond accommodation and food, for example trips to Montserrat, water games in Barcelona or visits to bullfights, were handled by the Castelltur travel agency in a monopoly position . This tourism of foreign vacationers has largely come to a standstill today.

Attractions

In addition to the Castell de Fels castle from the 16th to 17th centuries Century, the Romanesque church of Santa Maria de Castelldefels from the 10th-12th centuries . Century and the neo-Romanesque church Santa Maria de la Salut (built from 1888 to 1910), you can still find twelve town and watchtowers in Castelldefels today. Some of these towers have been carefully reconstructed (e.g. Torre de Can Gomar), others have been rebuilt with new buildings (e.g. Torre de Can Vinyes), and others are only preserved as ruins (e.g. Torre Moruna) . They mostly date from the second half of the 16th century, when the towers with a view of the beach and sea were built as watchtowers to warn against pirates on the Barbarian Coast .

Towers in and near the historic town center

Watchtowers in the southwest of the historic town center

Past environmental problems

The undeveloped strip of land between the town center and the beach part of Castelldefels, Gavà and Viladecans was and is used for agriculture, and apparently the untreated sewage from these places was used for irrigation until the 1980s and even fed occasional foul-smelling sewage lagoons near the beach. Accordingly, there was a significant mosquito problem in the summer, which the municipality of Castelldefels tried to counter with an insecticide that was distributed using smoke. A municipal vehicle drove through the beach settlement every few days and smoked the hotels and their guests. Another problem was aircraft noise.

Town twinning

Individual evidence and explanations

  1. ↑ Cifras oficiales de población resultantes de la revisión del Padrón municipal a 1 de enero . Population statistics from the Instituto Nacional de Estadística (population update).
  2. ↑ http://www.20min.ch/news/kreuz_und_quer/story/Zug-rast-in-Jugendliche---12-Tote-11334452 20 minutes about the accident in Castelldefels
  3. ↑ http://www.20min.ch/news/kreuz_und_quer/story/31796158
  4. ↑ stern.de, June 24, 2010 Train accident near Barcelona: Young people took fatal shortcuts.
  5. ↑ Tagesschau.de: 13 dead in train accident in Spain - did the high-speed train go too fast? ( Memento from June 27, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
  6. ^ J. García, CS Baquero, S. Oliver, H. Belmonte: Tragedia ferroviaria en Barcelona. La Generalitat eleva a 13 los muertos en la estación de Castelldefels. June 24, 2010, accessed January 7, 2018 .
  7. ^ Castelldefels, Plaça del Castell
  8. ↑ Castelldefels, Carrer Isaac Peral
  9. ↑ Castelldefels, Plaça Major, 41
  10. ↑ Castelldefels, Casal de la Cultura de Castelldefels
  11. ^ Castelldefels, Carrer Arcadi Balaguer, 116
  12. ↑ Castelldefels, Carrer Arcadi Balaguer, 106
  13. ↑ Castelldefels, Carrer Bisbe Urquinaona, 17
  14. ^ Castelldefels, Carrer Santiago Rusiñol , La Muntanyeta
  15. ↑ Castelldefels, Avenida 320, pp. 18-22; This tower is privately owned to the west of the old town center.
  16. ↑ Castelldefels, Passeig de Can Vinyes, 49; the ruin is privately owned and has been integrated into a newer building.
  17. ^ Castelldefels, Avinguda Rei en Jaume (La Raconada); on the property of the Rey Don Jaime Hotel; the largest of the watchtowers in the southwest of the old town center, with a view of the sea
  18. ↑ Castelldefels, Plaça Torre Moruna; formerly with a view of the sea

Web links

Commons : Castelldefels  - Collection of images, videos and audio files