Lying as it does along the French frontier, Alt Empordà is a zone of transit. It has an open, creative personality, linked to a geographical phenomenon that gives it a distinctive identity: the north wind, or Tramuntana, which can attain up to 150 kph and was described by the writer Gabriel García Márquez as a “tenacious [wind] that contains the seeds of madness”. The wind is also responsible for the astonishing quality of the light.