Ara és l'hora

Spain is in a bad way. Its economic woes show no sign of abating, tales of corruption among politicians and the royals feature every day on the news and Madrid has lost its bid to host the Olympics again. So Catalunya's calls for independence from its rotten oppressor grow ever stronger.

La Diada - the Catalan national day on 11 September - traditionally features some sort of action calling for independence. Last year there was a demonstration of 1.5m people in Barcelona. But this year, as the relationship between the Catalans and the Spanish soured further, the Catalans really wanted to hit the headlines. The Assemblia Nacional Catalana (or here's a link to it in English) planned a 400km human chain, the 'Via Catalana', from the north to the south of the province. The idea was inspired by a similar movement by Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in 1989 in a peaceful call to be freed from the Soviet Union (see VilaWeb for more detail).

There are many arguments that Catalan separatists put forward as reasons why they should be a separate state from Spain and one of them is that a Catalan government would be a sleek, cost-effective, corruption-less, well organised machine - in stark contrast to the current Spanish administration.

(There's a beautiful film by The Guardian about why one Catalan family believes in independence. See here.)

And, as if to prove this point, the Via Catalana was a triumph of planning and logistics. Dossiers of instructions were doled out to thoussands of volunteer organisers for weeks in advance. People sat for hours in bars discussing and plotting. Meetings were held. Practice-runs took place. Backup plans were made.

On 11 September, our little village was swamped with enthusiastic chain-formers. Coachloads came down from the mountains and out of the cities. The N340 was, for one glorious afternoon free of thundering lorries, while thousands upon thousands of people stood for several hours in the sun, wearing yellow t-shirts and waving the Estelada flags of the independence movement. The most organised brought fold-up chairs and coolboxes.

At 17:14 (to symbolise the year 1714 when Catalunya finally lost its independence) the church bells rang, everyone linked hands and cheered.

After that they stood around for a while having their photos taken, did some Mexican waves and sang the national anthem a few times. Then they all wandered back into the village for a drink.

Reports later that day said that somewhere between 400,000 and 1.5m people took part. The chain reached from the Pyrenees in the north right into Valencia beyond Catalunya's southern border. The organisers hailed it as a success.

In one of the packed village bars that evening the television was on. It showed an interview with Spain's deputy prime minister Soraya Saenza Santamaria. She said that a large 'silent majority' didn't come out to join the chain and that it was the government's obligation to listen to them too. She was drowned out by cries of "puta" from the drinkers.

"Madrid is trying to pretend this didn't happen," said the bar owner. "But it's been a great day. A really great day!"

Mules, mutts and mice for Sant Antoni

No sooner have we recovered from Christmas than the village has launched into another fiesta.

Sant Antoni kicked off yesterday with a procession of gegants i cap-grossos (giants and big-heads; see Wikipedia for background) accompanied by the village drummers. It was rainy and cold so there weren't that many people out, but they made up for it later by practically blowing up the village square. A spectacular firework display began with a flaming rocket zooming down the street suspended from a wire hung between trees and lampposts and concluded with giant fireballs. (Sorry, no photos of this bit, I was cowering in a doorway with my hands over my ears.)

Gegants i cap-grossos, and a sort of caterpillar

Then today was the big celebration of Sant Antoni Abat (Sant Anthony the Abbot), the patron saint of domestic animals and traginers ('beasts of burden' - mules, horses and so on) as well as our village. 'Tres tombs' saw animals of all shapes and sizes - beautifully groomed stallions, manky old mules, cows with ribbons in their horns, bulldogs with choke chains, toy dogs in pink babygros, canaries and mice - parading three times around the village, culminating with them being blessed by the priest.

Here's a selection of animals and their handlers...

And the blessing...

The queue for the priest (lots of barking)

Our puppy dodging the holy water

After mass, vermouth and prawns were served in the village square.

Bon nadal

Catalan Christmas has a distinct theme running through it - and, well, there's no easy way to say this to a British audience, it's shit.

The Catalans are very proud of their scatalogical Christmas culture and our Catalan friends have spent quite a bit of time talking to us about it.

Catholics like their nativity scenes, but if you look carefully at a Catalan version (pessebre) you might well spot the figure of a little man squatting in the corner with his trousers down. He is a caganer. Often it's a peasant-like figure, but sometimes it's a famous person such as a politician. There's one in the window of one of the butchers in our village.

The village butcher's caganer making his deposit, left

There are lots of theories about why the caganer has appeared (just Google it), but most people just seem to think it's quite funny.

This evening Catalan children will be singing to the caga tió (shit log) which - after it's been hit with a stick a few times - will then poo out some presents for them.

Caga tió: might not be so cheerful after being hit
with sticks by small children all evening

You can watch Stephen Fry chuckling about Catalan Christmas on QI...

Paella and politics: La Diada Nacional de Catalunya

In Catalunya, 11 September doesn't mean terrorism or the twin towers, instead it's the Catalan national day. Eating, drinking and having fun are important, but there's also a strong political aspect.

The date commemorates a defeat rather than a grand victory: 11 September 1714 was when Catalans in Barcelona fell to monarchist troops after a 14-month siege during the Spanish Succession War. I'm no great expert on this part of Spanish history, so when I find out more about what all this means, I'll let you know.

At the official ceremony in Barcelona, Artur Mas, the president of the Catalan government (the Generalitat), caused controversy by refusing to speak in Castilian at all. He said: "The Catalan national transition is being carried out." This is against a background of debates about the role of Castilian in schools, see more in El Pais. 

In our village, Catalan flags were draped out of balconies and a wreath was laid at the main monument. After that, the fun began with a 'gran paella popular' prepared for lunch under the shade of the trees at the Ermita. Most of the villagers were sitting at long trestle tables which they laid with salads, bread and drinks. Enormous portions of paella were speedily doled out at about 3pm. It was delicious, full of mussels, prawns and rabbit (even the odd rabbit's head) and generally agreed to be better than Miravet's cherry festival paella. 

Paella for the whole village

After lunch, men at several tables prepared Calmant, a drink that's unique to our village. In a silver bowl a mixture of rum, sugar and coffee are set alight and ladled higher and higher as the sugar dissolves. It's not very nice, in my opinion, and certainly doesn't help you sleep.

The afternoon was finished with the local band playing the Catalan national anthem, Els Segadors, before the evening's entertainments - bingo, skittles, sack races and games for the children - began.

Fire and water festival: Correfocs i festa de l'aigua

Your teenage son riding a bike laden with explosives and your toddler sliding around in two-foot of noxious-smelling artificial foam is certainly not most British parents' idea of a suitable Saturday night's family entertainment.

But here they really know how to entertain the young people. This weekend was the annual Festa Jove (Youth Festival). It kicked off at 9.30pm as gangs of young people with drums slung over their shoulders pounded out vigorous rhythms and danced around the square. Then they set the place ablaze.

Most (but certainly not all) of the older boys (plus a handful of girls) were clad in flameproof devil suits and they brandished long sticks with firecrackers nailed on the end. Together a group would hold their sticks aloft, touching in the middle, and set light to the lot. One even set his bike aflame.

 As the firecrackers blazed, banged and spun the devils ran and danced through the streets of the village.

Smaller children chased after them (the Catalan version of health and safety in this case being providing your young offspring with some long trousers and a scarf to cover their face). The rest of us dodged the sparks, drank beer and had a great time. (You can read about the symbolism of the correfoc on Wikipedia - it's all about the powers of good and evil.)

After a brief firework display in the village square, a huge canon jetted gallons of foam into the street until we were knee-deep in it. A good way to cool down, for sure, but it smelt vile. Covered in bubbles, people then moved on to the bars and the disco at the football pitch, which apparently lasted until dawn, although we didn't.

A few festivals

I've been so busy working that I haven't had a chance to update the blog. (If you're interested in how the UK's fastest growing, biggest and most impressive social enterprises are doing, check out www.socialenterpriselive.com/se100 next Monday night for the release of a big report that I've been editing. What's quite satisfying is that on most days my computer, printer and scanner have been powered only by the sun and the wind - more about our alternative power system later.)

Of course, as we're in Spain, a few more feasts, festivals and celebrations have whizzed by in the meantime. On Sunday 26 June, the villagers celebrated Corpus Christi by getting up at the crack of dawn to cover the streets in decorative carpets made out of different coloured stones and dyed rice husks. On their hands and knees kids and adults worked from the cool of 7 in the morning until the solid heat of lunchtime. In the past, they used flowers, but the wind blew them away. Designs ranged from the conservative floral stuff to Dora the Explorer. Here's some of what they made...

Later there was a procession and a church service, but we missed out on those as we were invited to a barbecue instead. The next day it was all swept away, like it had never happened.

There was also a Catalunyan holiday to celebrate St Joan (or St John). We completely missed out on this one except we could hear the music from one of the night clubs on the seafront thumping up through the hills at 5 in the morning.

One of the local villages was celebrating a saint of fishing too.

I think there are some fun beach party festivals coming up later in the summer.

Oh, and the weather has been great - lots of warm sunshine plus a few very loud thunderstorms at night.

Festa Cirera Miravet

Well, we've moved into our new house on the hill and I think I'm in paradise. But first, the cherry festival at Miravet.

On Sunday 12 June hundreds of locals, tourists and ex-pats packed picnics into cool boxes, grabbed their sunhats and piled into cars to drive to Miravet, a pretty hillside village on the banks of the great river Ebro which produces a good quantity of Catalunya's cherries.
Those that got there early bagged the shadiest of the trestle tables set out under the trees around the village square. Competition was so great for the best spots that a fist fight broke out at one. One particularly organised group set their table with a cloth, china plates and terracotta water jugs, then began to create individual bouquets for each place setting. We got out our scratched old plastic plates, disposable forks and cracked open the cans of Mahou.
Around the square were stalls piled high with boxes of cherries - bright red ones, dark red ones, purplish ones and orangey ones. More stalls were selling pottery (another Miravet speciality), wine, cheese and textiles. As we drank our beer, had a few snacks out of the coolboxes and wandered around the stalls, a huge paella was being prepared at the corner of the square. A very hot chef threw bucketfuls of rice and chicken into a paddling-pool sized dish over a big wood fire and stirred it all up with a giant spatula. A woman trolleyed two-litre plastic bottles of red wine to our tables and another delivered huge platefuls of cherries.

Once we had all feasted and drank and chatted, a band plugged in their amps and the dancing began. Later, cherry cake and a strong dark liquer were served. As dusk fell we decided we had had our fill of sunshine and cherries (and beer) - until next year.