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La Franqui-Never a port, but always a legend
Don’t look for the port of La Franqui. No red and green lights, no harbour master’s office. It is a moorage, a natural shelter which, for a number of strange reasons, has never been transformed into a port. It was here that the famous adventurer, Henry de Monfreid, was born.
There is a very quaint moorage to the north of Cap Leucate. It is not easily ideal if the Tramontane wind is strong but is perfect in a sea breeze. Its name is La Franqui. This is the only natural refuge between Collioure and the Cap d’Agde on this coast. For all wise sailors, La Franqui is the shelter you sail to when the wind begins to rise in the east or south-east. The history of the area is full of shipwrecks and the shore is the home to a number of boat wrecks which were not lucky enough to reach the shelter.
But strangely enough, despite the fact that each shelter, each grau (passage) on the Gulf of Lion has become a port, not one single mole was built at La Franqui. There was never a shortage of projects: the first one was mentioned in the 13th century, then under Vauban. The designer and builder of the Midi Canal, Pierre-Paul Riquet, thought about it as well and Napoleon nurtured a project. The last project was talked about in 1857… but there was never the slightest outline. Even the ‘Mission Racine’, which was entrusted with the tourist development of the coast in the 1970s, did not select the area to build a seaside and nautical resort. Certain people are delighted by the fact.
Under the rocky massif of the cliff, there is a magnificent 8 kilometre-long beach of fine sand called les Cossoules. It is a joy for all those who use the wind to move forward: sand yachts, kite surfs, sailboards, speed sails… and everything new that is invented each year to go quicker, higher, stronger in the breezes and the squalls that often occur in this area.
Just next to Leucate, La Franqui was also the birthplace (1879) of a great sailor and writer – adventurer who spent much of his childhood there. His writings inspired many people or, in all events, provided them with details to dream about. His name was Henry de Monfreid. Ethiopia and the Red Sea were his favourite locations but he often came back to La Franqui where he had a villa built opposite the sea and the main Coussoules beach.
By dropping anchor in this small cove (be careful, it is not lit up at night), perhaps
you will feel the wind of adventure of he whose famous dhows inspired Hergé in the Cigars of the Pharoah.
But the story between La Franqui and the Monfreid family began well before the young
Henry decided to take to the sea. At the outset, it was a story about real estate: in 1858, his great grand-father on his mother’s side, Pierre Bertrand, bought two large buildings at La Franqui which he transformed into furnished rental accommodation. Emile Bertrand, Henry
de Monfreid’s brother-in-law, who was an architect, designed in particular the casino of Biarritz, the Palmarium of Pau, the Caisse d’Epargne (a bank) of Narbonne and the Winter Palace of the Jardin d’Acclimatation (zoological park) of Paris.
In La Franqui, he became involved in tourist development by using his own money to build the access road to the station, built a dyke situated at the end of the beach in 1910, behind which he built the first villas, which he fitted out and sold to the first tourists who arrived in the area. The family company also bought a hotel-restaurant, the Excelsior, which can be classed today as top-of-the-range.
The builders in the family were then followed by the artists. Daniel de Monfreid, Henry’s father, was a very good painter but was not a bohemian. Quite to the contrary. His father’s (American) fortune enabled him to paint without having to worry about selling his works and he lived like a prince. He entertained Aristide Maillol, Degas, Matisse and Paul Gauguin, who made the neighbouring resort of Collioure famous, in his home.
In addition to writing, sailing dhows on the Red Sea, spying against the Turks, fishing for pearls, dealing in arms and smuggling hashish, Henry de Monfreid was an excellent drawer and a very good photographer. Some people just have so many talents…
