The ruined tower of Quermançó rises from a small volcanic hillock in the northern Alt Empordà with the quiet authority of something that has been watching this landscape for a very long time. It stands at only 196 metres, but its isolated position above the flat Empordà plain gives it an outsized presence — a dark silhouette visible from much of the region between the Albera mountains and the sea.
The castle was first documented in 1017, though the current tower structure dates from the 12th century. It was the seat of the Viscounts of Peralada, a powerful family who controlled much of the northern Empordà in the medieval period. The main square tower — standing to a height of approximately 15 metres, partly ruined at the top — is built of the volcanic basalt stone quarried from the very hill it stands on, giving the walls a dark, distinctive character unlike the pale sandstone of most Catalan castles.
Quermançó has a literary connection that distinguishes it from other ruined towers: it was the setting chosen by Jacint Verdaguer — Catalonia’s greatest poet — for his dramatic poem Quermançó (1894), which recounts a legendary tale of medieval love and tragedy set within the castle. The poem helped fix the castle’s romantic image in the Catalan cultural imagination.
The volcanic cap on which the castle stands is part of the Garrotxa Volcanic Zone’s easternmost extension, and the surrounding scrubland of olive, mastic, and Phoenician juniper is typical of the wild northern Empordà. From the tower, the views stretch to the Gulf of Roses to the south, the Pyrenean foothills to the north, and on clear days the Cap de Creus peninsula to the northeast.