From here a modern train takes commuters and beach-goers into the city in 45 minutes. It’s a town full of apartment blocks, a few small bars, a disco, post office, film developer, lottery ticket sales office, the beach and the campground. The station faces the beach, between the village and the sand. The train stops here every half-hour. Between this family holiday resort: The villages of Cubelles and Vilanova – other, larger family holiday places; the hotel strip, restaurants and night-life resort of Sitges; the long beach of Castelldefels. The coastal road is lined with campgrounds, busy with summer drivers, an obstacle course of scantily clad Europeans making their way to and from the seashore with inflatable dinosaurs and dripping ice cream bars. Finally, in mid-afternoon, we tuck Alfi under a shedding pine and a family of doves, and make camp beside her and between a laundry-fanatical Spanish couple and a boisterous family of Italians. In the dappled shade it’s possible to reduce the body’s core temperature from unpleasant to merely sticky. By evening the luxurious campsite sells whole barbecued chickens and freshly baked baguettes better than most French boulangeries, and the families ignite their stoves, heat their olive oil and fill the place with the aroma of frying potatoes, citronella, bacon and shampoo.

Seville