Six town councils in the Alt Empordà, including Castelló d'Empúries, have come out against the Catalan government's new rules on tourist flats. They join a wider group of coastal municipalities in the province of Girona that are calling for the regulation to be reviewed.
The Alt Empordà councils are Castelló d'Empúries, el Port de la Selva, Llançà, l'Escala, Roses and Sant Pere Pescador. Elsewhere on the Costa Brava, Begur, Calonge i Sant Antoni, Castell d'Aro, Platja d'Aro i S'Agaró and Pals have taken the same position. In total, around ten councils in the Girona area have now signed a manifesto against the decree. Several have also passed formal motions in their municipal plenary sessions.
The Biblioteca Ramon Bordas i Estragués, the public library in Castelló d'Empúries, is restarting its reading clubs this autumn after the summer break. The new season covers comics, fiction, theatre and young readers, with visits from several authors and two theatre trips to Barcelona.
Each club is run by a dedicated facilitator. The programme is built around shared reading and group discussion.
Comics club opens the season
The comics reading club is the first to return. It has been running for more than twelve years and meets once a quarter.
Its first session is on 8 October and will look at Los combates cotidianos by French cartoonist Manu Larcenet. Ovídia Barneo, who has led the club since it began, will continue to run the meetings.
Castelló d'Empúries will host an escape room on Saturday 3 October that brings grandparents, children and families together to solve puzzles as a team. The activity, called Els exploradors de l'edat perduda (The Explorers of the Lost Age), also aims to challenge stereotypes about age.
The game is organised by the Fundació Privada Hospital de Santa Llúcia de Castelló d'Empúries, a private foundation linked to the town's historic Santa Llúcia hospital. It is run with the support of Castelló d'Empúries town council, the Ajuntament, and the Fundació "la Caixa", the charitable foundation connected to the Catalan banking group.
Castelló d'Empúries town council has replaced eight panels and plaques on Empuriabrava's heritage trail. Most of the signs had faded in the sun, and some had been vandalised.
The work was carried out in recent days by the council's Historic Heritage Department. The signs mark some of the most notable buildings, sculptures and sites in the residential marina.
A trail born from an anniversary
The heritage signage was designed and installed in 2017 and 2018, when Empuriabrava marked fifty years as a residential marina. Its purpose was twofold: to highlight the marina's most distinctive features and to give visitors a route through its historic, cultural and natural heritage.
Castelló d'Empúries will not have to draw up an economic-financial plan, known in Catalan as a Pla Econòmic Financer (PEF), despite missing some budget stability targets in 2025. The town council says the gap came from spending its own savings on projects in the municipality, not from any problem with its finances.
The change follows a new Spanish government rule, Royal Decree-Law 13/2026, which gives councils more room to use their own reserves without triggering extra paperwork.
A problem for well-run councils
Spanish councils must meet a set of fiscal targets. These include budget stability indicators and the so-called spending rule, which limits how fast spending can grow. If a council misses them, it normally has to prepare a PEF explaining how it will get back on track.
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