L’Ametlla de Mar is also called La Cala. Its inhabitants are not "ametllers" but caleros. The first cove in Ametlla, the most northeast, Sant Jordi was a very convenient shelter for sailors and fishermen, and along with Massada de pons, helped by the mountains and Almadrava beach at the north border of the town, was the most important small inhabited area before the twentieth century. In Sant Jordi, without mentioning the roman and preroman times, there are ruins of a XIII Centry castle, headquarters of the Order of St. George of Alfama, the only strictly Catalan order in history, and restored with another castle built over the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. At the tip of the Ametlla Cove an artillery tower was erected, near the sea, and restored in the sixteenth century then destroyed by the British during the French War, along with another tower within the Cala, which has now disappeared. With regards to the town centre, as far as documented evidence is concerned, everything is uncertain until the last quarter of the XVIII century. It is a result of Carlos III population momentum that the modern town emerged as a fishing centre joined to the town of Perello (from which it was seperated on Christmas eve 1891) coinciding with the arrival and gradual establishment of Valencian fishing groups. During the XIX Century, and above all going into the second half, the town consolidated and the population grew significantly, with people moving in from neighbouring towns (l’Ametlla began the XX Century with 2,500 inhabitants, about half the current population). They also receive a strong boost with fishing and agricultural and commercial subsidiaries, enhanced by the desamortizador process and the construction of the railway (1860-1870). The first years of the XX Centry were relatively prosperous until the recession of the thirtys hit the village and cause mas migration which weakened the village, of which migration to Palamos stands out and which concentrated in the post civil war years and extends until the sixties, when the flow of immigrants and tourists transformed the demographic face, productivity and culture of the town. Currently the relative weight of the fishing activity has decreased a lot, but still exists in the touristic Ametlla de Mar, the essence is of fishermen and seafaring.