La Fosca is one of the great beaches of the Costa Brava. Located to the north of the town of Palamós, it is one of the most renowned, cleanest and quietest.
The town is a major port (with the closure of Sant Feliu the only commercial harbour in the Province of Girona) with one of the last remaining fishing fleets on this part of the Mediterranean coast. It is famous for the locally caught prawns from Palamós.
The ruins of the castle of Sant Esteve de Mar are at the eastern end of the beach, on a promontory of granite rock that separates La Fosca from the cove of S’Alguer. It is not known, precisely, when the Castle of San Esteban was founded. Even though the first documented mention appears on a parchment from 1063 in the documentary collection of the monastery of San Pedro de Galligants, the castle would have been constructed on the site of a Roman villa which would also probably have been built, taking advantage of an earlier Iberian settlement.
The human settlement in the current term is located in the dolmen of Montagut, at the top of the Montagut hill, where the human presence, without specifying much dates from between 2100 and 1500 BC. The first documented site is the Iberian site of the Castle, an occupation that was formed at the beginning of the 6th century BC, discovered in 1935 by the Museum’s curator, Lluís Barceló i Bou.
Romanisation, which began with the landing of the consul Roman Marc Porcius Cato on the coast of Roses, in 195 BC, also left his mark; there are still some left, on the hill of Sant Esteve de Mar.
We lose track of the community of habit until the dates that bring us closer to the life of the castle of Vila-romà, around the 10th-11th century. Perhaps a short time later, there is the castle of Sant Esteve de Mar, linked to the beginnings of the town, since from his hand Palamós, as a town, entered history.
BRUGAROL