Pujola

Boat transit out of Port de Mataro to El Pujola is short on the clock, ten or fifteen minutes, but the position is the outer-row, the farthest of the Mataro rotation, and the open Mediterranean tells you so. Surface chop builds in here, mar de fondo can run, and the boat is not anchored against a fixed buoy: each dive begins with the centre dropping anchor onto the slab and running a return line across the rock. Down the anchor line, the structure feels different from the inner barras. Discontinuous wall sections rather than a single ridge. A flat-slab character broken into segments. Owner notes call it "more like a wall with discontinuous parts," the morphology that earns the local term llosa rather than barra.

Pick a direction along the slab and follow it counter-current first. Current is episodic on this dive; calm visits are common, but when it runs strong enough to dictate direction, the choice is one-way until the line back to the anchor. The bottom holds rock fauna in the cracks — Mediterranean moray, flabellinid nudibranchs, the occasional flatworm. The deeper outer face turns toward the blue, where larger fish may pass and pelagic potential is real because the slab sits at the outer edge of local rocky habitat. A metal beam runs along part of the structure and reads as a useful navigation marker rather than a destination.

Bottom time is the operational limit. Twenty to twenty-five minutes of no-stop time on air at 26-29m is the working envelope, less if the diver works into current. EAN32 is the standard local mix. Return on the opposite face shallower or back along the slab depending on gas, ascend on the anchor line, and deploy an SMB on the safety stop if the boat has drifted off or surface visibility is poor.

El Pujola is the deep dive in the Mataro rotation. Closer ridges sit at 14-22m; this one bottoms at 26-29m with a surrounding profile to about 34m. The slab morphology is the only break from the otherwise uniform ridge pattern of the area, and the open-water position gives the dive an exposed-coast feel that does not exist at the inshore barras. For divers who want a 25-30m profile twenty minutes from Barcelona without driving to Tossa or the Costa Brava, this is the local answer.

Nitrox 32 makes the difference at this depth, with the air-tank version of this dive ending before the diver has settled in. A drysuit or 7mm semi-dry is the right call from November to April, and even in summer the bottom band reads 15-18C below the thermocline. Hood and gloves help. Watch the swell forecast: outer-row position means the surface can be lumpy when the inner barras are calm. The metal beam on the slab is a feature you may encounter; it is not a wreck dive and the deeper aircraft loss associated with this stretch of coast is intentionally not a published dive site. Standard kit applies: SMB, dive computer, cutting device, and a torch for the slab cracks. Skill prerequisites read as solid buoyancy at 30m, comfort with mid-water current, and competent SMB deployment from depth.