Es, Sa and Ses: The Salty Catalan Cadaqués Doesn't Want to Lose

The parlar salat is a form of Catalan that uses the article es, sa and ses (s' before a vowel) instead of el and la; it comes from the Latin IPSE. It was spoken on the coast between Blanes and Begur and in Cadaqués, and today it is almost exclusive to Cadaqués, where the village has come together so as not to lose it.

On the map of Cadaqués there's a clue almost nobody reads: Sa Conca, S'Arenella. That “sa” and that “s'” are the salat article, a way of saying “la” and “el” that comes straight from Latin and that has faded village by village along the Costa Brava until it survives, almost exclusively, here. In June 2026 the newspaper Ara told how the village has come together so as not to lose it. This is its story.

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An article that comes from Latin

Standard Catalan says el and la. The parlar salat says es and sa, ses in the feminine plural and s' before a vowel. The difference isn't one of accent: they are two different Latin words. The usual article comes from the demonstrative ILLE; the salat one, from IPSE. According to a 2019 article in Surtdecasa, Catalan is the only Romance language that keeps articles of both origins.

In the Balearic Islands the salat is today the ordinary form of everyday speech. On the Girona coast, for centuries, it was the speech of the seafaring villages.

From Blanes to Cadaqués, and then only Cadaqués

Traditionally it was spoken along a narrow strip of coast between Blanes and Begur and, further north, in isolation, in Cadaqués. The portal the Universitat de Barcelona devotes to the parlar salat counts seven villages that used it: Blanes, Lloret de Mar, Tossa de Mar, Sant Feliu de Guíxols, Palamós, Begur and Cadaqués. Viquipèdia, the Catalan Wikipedia, sums it up in one line: it has gone from being used from Blanes to Cadaqués to being almost exclusive to Cadaqués. Outside the village it survives mainly in place names, such as Sa Tuna, Ses Negres or S'Agaró.

The linguist Antoni Maria Alcover, who gathered data along this coast through surveys, put it in writing in 1918 without beating about the bush: sailors and farmers spoke salat; refined people did not. According to the same Surtdecasa article, the mass tourism of the mid-20th century sped up its retreat in the best-connected villages.

Why it held on here

The short answer is geography. Hemmed in by the mountains of the Pení, Cadaqués lived facing the sea and was practically cut off by land from the rest of the comarca until the end of the 19th century, according to Viquipèdia.

One of the words the English Wikipedia gives as an example of cadaquesenc is rastell, the steep street paved with slate set on edge. Others are grop, the black cloud that brings rain, and xarxi, a fishing net. The same entry notes that verbs which in standard Catalan end in -o in the first person end in -i here, and that the village's speech is the one closest to the Catalan of Ibiza. The explanation it gives looks back to the Middle Ages: when Jaume I conquered the islands, he resettled them with people from the Empordà.

Alive or almost extinct?

In 2010, a doctoral thesis at the Universitat de Barcelona by Núria Busquet Isart concluded that the salat article began to fall out of use in the fifties, that it was practically extinct and that it held out only in Cadaqués, where the youngest no longer used it.

The philologist Ernesta Sala, who in 1983 published a book with thousands of words and expressions collected first-hand from speakers, offers a clue to why others see it as more alive: as Ara reports, speakers switch to the Empordà variety of Catalan when addressing outsiders, for fear of being mocked. The salat hasn't entirely gone; it hides.

What the village is doing

Ara's report lists the threats — social media, the pressure of tourism, the loss of the vocabulary of fishing and farming, the changes in population — and also what is being done. A Facebook group, whose name translates as “I speak Cadaquesenc too”, brings together more than 1,200 users who debate, for example, exactly what barrofar means. Ràdio Cap de Creus has been running Gent salada for eleven years, a quiz about the village and its speech with some fifty pupils from fourth to sixth year at the Escola Caritat Serinyana. The school uses salat in notices to families, in the end-of-year magazine and in the Jocs Florals.

The Societat L'Amistat asks residents for words and sayings to print on the sugar sachets that come with coffee in the village's establishments. The philologist Pep Vila has gathered some 2,000 words from written sources in his Paraulari de Cadaqués and is preparing a second volume. And the councillor for Culture announced for autumn 2026 a council of sages to keep the village's historical and linguistic memory; we haven't yet found out whether it has been set up.

For anyone staying a few weeks

A weekend usually isn't enough to hear it, and Ernesta Sala's observation explains why: outsiders are spoken to in another register. Anyone who spends a few weeks in Cadaqués out of season and keeps going back to the same places stands a better chance of hearing es and sa around them. It's best to listen without imitating it as a joke, which is exactly what pushed it into hiding. And to look at the sugar sachet that comes with your coffee, in case it carries a saying.

Checked

Data checked in October 2026 against: Ara (report of 18 June 2026, Spanish and English editions), Viquipèdia (Article salat and Cadaqués), English Wikipedia (Cadaqués), Surtdecasa (El parlar salat al litoral empordanès, 2019) and Universitat de Barcelona (thesis by Núria Busquet Isart, 2010, and the El parlar salat portal).