Església de Santa Maria de Pineda, Church building in Pineda de Mar, Spain
Església de Santa Maria de Pineda is a Gothic stone church in the center of Pineda de Mar, with a tall bell tower and a wide main room flanked by two side passages. Its facade is covered in sgraffito patterns carved into the plaster, while the entrance door has a stone lintel above it with an old inscription.
A first Romanesque church stood on this site around 1079, but the building seen today was raised in the 1500s after a pirate raid led by Dragut damaged the earlier structure. In the 18th century the church gained side naves, a new bell tower, and a baroque facade, and after a fire in 1936 the architect Isidre Puig Boada oversaw its repair in the 1940s.
The bell tower still marks the rhythm of daily life in Pineda de Mar, ringing at dawn and dusk as it has for generations. On major feast days, the space in front of the church fills with processions and local families, and the carved stone images of saints inside receive flowers and candles from residents.
When visiting, take time to walk around the outside first, because the sgraffito decoration and the stone carvings are easy to overlook from a distance. Inside, the light changes through the stained glass during the day, so a visit at different hours offers a different view of the stone arches and the main altar.
The church kept a defensive wall around it from 1562 until 1691, a reminder that this sacred space once served as a refuge for the whole town against pirate raids. Beyond Dragut's attack in 1545, Pineda faced another landing in 1584, when a fleet of nineteen Turkish ships ransacked the area, and the church's fortified perimeter became part of local memory.
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