Laroque-des-Albères, Where the Pyrenees End
A Catalan village at the foot of the Albères, the last range of the Pyrenees before the Mediterranean, photographed in the last light of a July evening.
The last range
The Pyrenees do not stop at the coast so much as run down into it. Their final stretch is the Albères, a low, wooded range whose crest carries the border between France and Spain before it drops into the Mediterranean.
Laroque-des-Albères sits where those slopes meet the Roussillon plain. It is in French Catalonia, and in Catalan it is La Roca d'Albera. The village is built of rubble stone and stucco under terracotta roofs, with the hills directly behind.
Half past eight
In late July the sun sets late here, and for the last half hour it comes in low and warm across the plain. White stucco turns gold, bare stone goes honey-coloured, and the sky behind stays a deep, even blue. It is the most forgiving light of the day, and it does not last.
The two photographs we kept were made six minutes apart. One is a white tower with an arched loggia at the top, catching the sun against the hills. The other is a house of rubble stone and stucco with a red door at the head of an iron stair, and small terracotta tiles set into the wall as decoration.
Up to the Cerdagne
Four days later we were two hours inland and more than a thousand metres higher, on the Cerdagne plateau and the Train Jaune. The two places belong to the same department and the same Catalan history, but the light could hardly be more different: warm and horizontal on the plain, clean and high on the plateau.
