They creep into the notorious paintings of a Costa Brava lad who made a lucrative trade out of being bizarre – Salvador Dal?Swarming black flies are up there with his other trademarks: ants, skulls, eggs, droopy watches, frail wooden crutches and strange, bleak landscapes topped by bright, blue skies.To many, the words “Costa Brava” mean only cheapo package-holiday horror: booze, brawls, shoddy hotels. But this is a libel that this northern corner of Catalonia is now doing its best to kill Art is one of the weapons it’s chosen. Dal?as born here, married here (to the sexually voracious Gala), and lived much of his life here. A “Dal?riangle” is being vigorously promoted: the manic Theatre Museum at Figueres, north of Gerona, where he’s buried in a crypt with all the appurtenances of a (satanic) saint; the delightful Dal?ouse, which he created at the hamlet of Port Lligat from a cluster of fishermen’s cottages; and, at P?, Gala’s shrine-like castle – like Wagner’s Ring rescored for Hollywood – that Dal?ould only enter by invitation.The international itinerant purveyor of surrealism is far more rooted in his local landscape and tradition than I ever realised. His sheer brilliance, entangled with sheer charlatanry, suddenly makes more sense here, and not only because of St Narcissus.I’m here to pay homage to Catalonia – the Costa Brava, its inland towns and the Catalan capital, Barcelona – outside the summer season I recommend this.

Upcountry, it may be hard to find a place that’s open to eat, but you get there in the end The sun still shines And you have the pleasures of emptiness Even the Dal?useum’s coach park is deserted. I am one of only six people at the Port Lligat house, and one of 10 at Gala’s castle.At Port Lligat the whitewashed Dal?ouse is packed with his hoard of kitsch obsessions. Photos of other celebrated moustache-wearers (Stalin, the German Kaiser, Philip IV of Spain). A stuffed polar bear, given to him by the English art collector Edward James and used as an umbrella stand.

Little chairs arranged in descending order of size, as in the story of Goldilocks A sofa imitating the curves of Mae West’s lips. A poolside pavilion made in the exact shape of the polyester packaging a new radio came in (packaging and radio are here for you to check). So far, so bizarre.But one window, deliberately shaped like a picture frame, looks out on to the bay. Still Mediterranean waters are enclosed in a flat, neutral terrain, with sudden irruptions of volcanic rock. Gazing through it, I can easily see in my mind’s eye a vast, grotesque, naked figure looming across the blue sky from one of the islands of the bay Dal? landscapes aren’t imaginary. They’re here.Mass tourism in Spain began on the Costa Brava in the Fifties. Overtaken by Benidorm and the Balearics, it now risks being a faded voice from the past An image once acquired is hard to dismantle.