We recently took a trip to Costa Brava to see some of what the region has on offer. One of the great things about visiting when we did, at the end of September was that it’s the time of the annual the Pirate Festival in L’Estartit Spain.
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Pirates of the Catalonia – visiting the Pirate Festival in L’Estartit Spain
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This is such a fun time to visit the town as it gets completely decked out in the pirate look. Even the streets were dressed up with flags and clothing.
History of pirates in the Costa Brava
The festival remembers a time when this coastline of Spain was regularly attacked by pirates coming over from North Africa in the 16th Century.
The alarm would ring out and people would take their belongings to two towers on either side of the town. Barricading themselves in for safety.
The Medes Islands, just off the coast were also regularly raided.
Today these are major conservation areas. And you can only step foot on the islands once a year for the festival.
Travelling to the Medes Islands during the Pirate Festival in L’Estartit Spain
We took a boat trip on the El Corsari Negre to travel around the Medes islands.
It was hard to imagine how terrifying these attacks must have been on the beautifully sunny day we visited with calm seas.
Pirate shows in town
Back in the town, there is the main square which has pirate shows. Even though these are in Spanish our children loved watching all of the action.
Buying pirate goods
Throughout the town there are stalls selling everything from pirate crafts.
There were even pirate themed mojitos.
We loved that there are lots of play areas for children too, again all with the pirate look.
This was such a fun place to visit at this time. Everyone really got into the spirit of the occasion, dressing up and with flags everywhere.
It’s a great time of year to visit too as the main tourists have left but the weather is still warm. We loved it.
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I’d love to do this and really get into the spirit with all the dressing up!
This looks amazing, I bet it was lots of fun!
looks fantastic! G would have a great time 😉
Looks like the perfect time to visit if you have children – history, warm weather, loads for them to do & mojitos for the mums!!
Oh my goodness so much piratey fun!!
ah this looks like so much fun, Wilf would have had a blast! x
it really was such a great time to go – so much fun for the kids. And so much quicker to get to than I thought it would be!