Far away and remote, hidden, small, unknown and ancient... The village of Cantallops watches the time go by. It still stands dignified, the church old belfry, tower of hours now and in days gone by defence tower, watching for enemies...Cantallops wild and wooded, rough land, poor slopes, brooks and fountains... Heart of the Albera. In winter you are in the sun and in summer you get burned, the north wind tramuntana clears the air driving away all dampness and the roaring autumn storms crack your skin watering the corks and giving new life to the fountains.

Everything is like before, few things have changed. The village keeps the same spirit the villages always had: People live off the land, a farm, small vegetable gardens, thick woods that can be found in this part of the Albera, a restaurant which opened some years ago... People here know each other and they stop to chat in the streets. Men meet in the bar after work to play cards. They go hunting for the wild boar when it is season, particularly in the mountains of Requesens and between the work, the leisure time and the hunting they let the time go by without looking for much trouble and hassles…A life like this is the one that many city residents end up by envying, who being always in a hurry and with worries never get anywhere except for a doctor’s consulting room.

Silence invades everything, only the birds disturb it or the crowning of a cock from a courtyard… When it gets dark, however, the howling of the wolves is not heard like before. This animal disappeared more than a century ago from the area but it had been so abundant that it gave name to the village «Cantallops» (Canta: Sing- Llops: Wolves). Wolves died out due to the action of man. The last wolves were hunted and killed in the middle of the 19th century because they had always attacked the cattle of the farmers. The elderliest still remember that when a farmer killed a wolf, a fox or a stone marten, he kept the skins of these animals and went to the farmhouses in the area and to the village houses to show them while collecting money and other presents. He also showed them to the village civil authorities to get a reward. In the end, the skins were displayed on the town hall façade or in the main square. If a wolf was captured alive, it was caged and taken to the village square where everybody hit it with sticks or threw stones at it until the animal was dead... This way, little by little, wolves were exterminated and only the memory of their existence remains thanks to the place name.

The village of Cantallops lies in the middle of the Albera sierra, on a small plane of the south-western slopes of Puig Neulós, at the headwaters of the Torrelles torrent. The village centre consists of a group of houses near the ruins of the medieval castle and the church, on the right of the Torrelles torrent.

Thanks to the thick cork forests that cover the mountains, Cantallops lived through a time of prosperity at the end of the 19th century with the manufacturing of cork. The village reached the number of 780 inhabitants in 1860 and 731 in 1900, which are very far from the 461 inhabitants it had in 1950 after the cork crisis and the Civil War, and at present (2001) the inhabitants are 257 h.

Quite a number of inhabitants live off the land and the forest exploitation (wood, cork, hunt…), another part works in the restaurants –the restaurant called Can Pau has got quite a reputation, few metres after the entrance to the village. Here come many French on Sunday wishing for a good meal and afterwards they can dance in the ballroom set up by the restaurant owners, who know very well the character of «bons vivants» of the French who on the whole only look for a good meal and having fun… Some locals commute to work to La Jonquera or to Figueres. There are still, as testimonies of other days when they were abundant, some olive trees and carefully worked vines.

In the diploma granted by Carles el Calb in 844 to Adulf, first abbot of the monastery of Sant Martí de les Escaules, the place of «Leocarcari in monte Albario al pagus de Peralada» is mentioned as a possession of this monastery. It seems possible that this place is the present Cantallops. It is interesting, on the other hand, the presence of the name Albera already in the first half of the 9th century. In a precept of Lothari dating from 982 in favour of Saint Pere de Rodes, we find «Cantalupus» among the dominions of this monastery. This place name appears written with the names «Cantalupus», Cantalops, Cantalupis during the 12th, 13th and 14th centuries.

According to the specialists in the place name, the root «cant» is pre-Latin and has the meaning of stone, rock. The name «Cantallops» would mean then «wolves rock».

In the municipality of Cantallops, there are two megalithic tombs near the Mas Baleta. The dolmen in the Mas Baleta I has got four upright flat stones and two that form the cover. The so-called dolmen of the Mas Baleta II is a cist of small dimensions, with three flat stones and a cover, now much destroyed. The excavation provided bones and fragments of hand-made pottery.

The church of Saint Esteve de Cantallops bears some vestiges of the Romanesque period (10th – 11th centuries). It is documented in 1279 and 1280 with the name ecclesia de Cantalupis. Nowadays is a church with two naves and a square chevet which has undergone a large number of restorations. The main façade bears a granite stone face placed in a careless way. The granite is the most abundant stone in the area. There is a window in the middle of the wall which has been greatly modified. The southern wall has a portal with two arches, one circular and the other pointed, in front of a small square which had formerly been a cemetery. There are also two windows with semicircular arches greatly transformed from how they were before. In the northern side there are lateral chapels, added during the 18th century. By the church door, it stands out a Gothic memorial stone dating from 1320. The external stairs to access to the belfry still remain. The belfry, close to the façade, was one of the towers of the castle of Cantallops. It has got a rectangular shape. The face stones are not worked; at the sides there are ashlars well squared off. Around the belfry and standing out above the present village houses, fragments of the ancient medieval walls can be seen (rows of stones placed with little care and some loopholes). These walls were destroyed during the 18th and the 19th centuries to build the present houses, many of them leaning on the very wall.

In the church square, there are remains of a wall portal. The west wall joined to a tower that serves as a belfry. In the street of the old town, one can still see two portals more, pretty much modified from what they must have been before. The remains left from the walls of Cantallops could date from the 13th or 14th centuries.

In the 12th century, a personage called Bernad de Cantallops was placed as hostage, among other protectors, at the disposal of the Count Gausfred III from Rosselló to guarantee the help given «sim de Rechesen tibi usque habeas eum in sana pace, sives engan». In the days of Alfons el Liberal, probably in 1288, the castle of Cantallops was destroyed by French invaders like other fortresses in Empordà, according to the Gesta Comitum Barcinonencium.

Most of the houses in Cantallops were built or rebuilt during the 18th and 19th centuries (many houses bear dates from the turn of the 19th century), which means that the population enjoyed in those days from a certain good economic condition. From that period big stone houses remain, with doors and windows with well-cut ashlars.

The monastery of the canonesses of Saint Augustine of Saint Bartomeu de Bell-lloc was 4 kms away from Cantallops, downstream from the torrent of Torrelles and on its right bank, where nowadays stands the farmhouse Bell-lloc. This convent is first mentioned in 1207. In 1222 a part of the community went to live to Peralada. In 1391 Felip de Rocabertí ceded the building and the land from the old castle of Peralada to the nuns, who finished moving there. On this date they definitely abandoned Bell-lloc. The community stayed in Peralada until its very recent disappearance.

In the census from 1279 and 1280, the priory of de Polcroloco appears among the churches and monasteries to pay the tenth imposed by Rome to contribute to the financing of the crusades.

There are some vestiges of the monastery in the north at about 50 metres of the present farmhouse Bell-lloc. There are some walls that could belong to a Romanesque church. An excavation of the remains would no doubt help clear out the doubts posed on the preserved remains.

Bell-lloc was restored at the turn of the century with many Modernist elements. Bell-lloc is a place name of Latin origin. Remains of common Roman amphora and pottery have been spread all over the farmhouse land. This proves the possible existence of a Roman settlement.