The Red Coral of Cap de Creus: The Trade That Fed Cadaqués, Now Under a Fishing Ban

For centuries, red coral fishing was a source of income for Cadaqués: it was ripped out from llaüts with an iron cross and, around 1880, the best quality fetched the price of gold. Today it is an endangered species and fishing for it is suspended from Begur to the French border until 31 December 2027.

For centuries, part of Cadaqués's money came up from the seabed in the form of red branches. The coral of Cap de Creus was ripped out from llaüts (traditional boats) with an iron cross, sold in Marseille, Genoa or Livorno and, around 1880, the best quality fetched the price of gold. Today it is an endangered species, fishing for it is suspended in these waters until the end of 2027, and the news being celebrated is that it is growing back. This is the story of a trade that is no longer practised.

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A Catalan trade with a port in Cadaqués

The Gran Enciclopèdia Catalana describes coral fishing and trading as a Catalan monopoly during the 14th and 15th centuries. The production areas belonged to the Crown of Aragon: the Catalan coast from Portvendres to Cap de Sant Sebastià, Mallorca and western Sardinia. There were three great trading centres, Barcelona, Cadaqués and l'Alguer, with Marseille and Livorno as competitors. Almost all the coral was sold abroad: in Marseille, Genoa, Trapani and Livorno, which was also, together with Torre del Greco, where it was worked.

In the 17th and 18th centuries piracy hampered the trade. At the end of the 18th century demand from the jewellery trade revived it, and the villages of the northern coast — Portvendres, Cadaqués, Begur, l'Estartit and l'Escala — fitted out coral campaigns again. Between the 18th and 19th centuries, according to an article published in Surtdecasa, coral was the main source of income for Cadaqués, l'Escala, l'Estartit and Begur.

An iron cross and Greek divers

It was fished from llaüts, with the corallera or by breath-hold divers. The corallera was an iron cross with nets that was dragged against the rock wall. According to the same Surtdecasa article, only 20% of the broken coral stayed caught in the net; the rest fell to the bottom and destroyed entire habitats. Then came the divers with heavy helmets, lead shoes and air pumped by hand.

Around 1880 quality coral was worth as much as gold. Among the buyers on the coast were the Pont family, from Cadaqués, and the campaigns were run by Josep Carrascal, Italian businessmen and Greek businessmen; the latter employed Greek divers, above all at Cap de Creus and Cap de Begur. Around 1859, Narcís Monturiol designed his submarine, the Ictíneo, with coral fishing in mind and to spare the divers suffering. And Josep Pla went as far as saying that this coast ought to be called the Costa del Coral, not the Costa Brava.

An animal that grows by millimetres

Red coral (Corallium rubrum) is neither a stone nor a plant: it is a colony of tiny animals, and what you see is their skeleton. It grows between 3 and 5 millimetres a year. According to the Història natural dels Països Catalans, Cap de Creus is one of the few places in the Mediterranean where it is found close to the surface.

A colony could reach some 50 centimetres and live more than a hundred years, but today those over 20 centimetres are very rare. Scuba diving, from the fifties onwards, changed the scale of extraction, and fishing turned what had been small branching forests into something more like a meadow.

The ban, until 31 December 2027

In 2015 the International Union for Conservation of Nature raised red coral to the Endangered category. On 30 January 2017, the Institut de Ciències del Mar (CSIC) delivered a report to the Generalitat that considered most populations on the Catalan coast ecologically extinct and recommended closing the fishery with a twenty-year moratorium.

Order ARP/59/2017, of 7 April, cut the licences for that season and then suspended fishing until 31 December 2027 in internal waters, from Begur to the French border. A Ministry order of November 2017 also made the external waters of the same stretch a closed area.

The good news came in 2020: a study by ICTA-UAB found that the coral is slowly recovering at Cap de Creus and the Medes, to levels similar to those of the eighties in Catalonia. Outside the protected areas that recovery isn't seen, and poachers and warming water remain threats.

How to look at it today

Coral is no longer sought in order to take it away. Anyone who dives in the natural park can see it on the rock walls and in the cavities where it lives, and the rule is that of an endangered species: look, don't touch. Those who don't dive find the trace of the trade in the village's history, in those buyers, in the divers who came from Greece and in a coast that, as Pla wished, could be called the Coral Coast. The ban expires at the end of 2027; what comes after is not yet on record.

Checked

Data checked in October 2026 against: Gran Enciclopèdia Catalana (corall), Història natural dels Països Catalans (La transformació de les poblacions de corall vermell), Surtdecasa (El corall vermell de la Costa Brava, 2014), the institutional declaration for the protection of red coral presented in El Masnou (2018), vLex (Order ARP/59/2017) and 3Cat (2020).