Perpignan

French and Catalan influences, both ancient and modern, combine to exciting effect in this Mediterranean city, says Robin Gauldie

- Robin Gauldie

Arrving in the capital of Pyrénées-Orientales, I immediately get the sense of a city with a distinct cultural identity. Road signs welcome me not only to Perpignan, but to Perpinya. And not just to Perpinya, but to Perpinya – ‘Centre del Mon’ (Centre of the World).

There is no doubt that Perpignan is in France. That question was settled in 1659, after centuries of Franco-Spanish squabbling. But the city has a clear Catalan identity. The border is only 35 kilometres away, and Barcelona is 650 kilometres nearer than Paris. The red and yellow Catalan flag flies over the hôtel de ville, alongside the tricolore and the EU’s star-spangled banner. They dance the sardana on Place de la Loge at midsummer, when bonfires are lit from torches carried from Canigou, the mountain revered by Catalans. And the street signs are bilingual.

Arriving at the Gare de Perpignan, I do not perceive any of the ‘frenzied energy’ that some writers have claimed inspired Salvador Dalí (who lived most of his life just across the Spanish frontier in Cadaqués) to declare the city’s railway station ‘the centre of the world’. In my haste, I fail to notice the Dalíesque swirls of colour that decorate its high ceilings.

It is not until I arrive on Place de Catalogne that I am reminded of Dalí’s links with Perpignan by a gleefully mad statue of the artist, arms flung wide to embrace the world. It is a copy of his effigy above the station entrance.

Knowing a little about Perpignan’s early history, I expect a historic centre replete with medieval mansions and churches, but it is the art-deco patrimony that surprises.