I saw this couple walking down the street – hand in hand – sometimes pausing and talking intensely. They looked somewhere between 70 and 80. And I loved their shoes!
stepping out in style
Author: Kate Wilson
Feste Major
August is the month when lots of people go on holiday. Shops close, businesses work shorter hours, the streets are quieter and the beaches are busy. It is also the time for street parties and most towns and neighbourhoods in the bigger cities have grand fiestas called Festes Majors.
In Barcelona my favourite one is in Gracia where the streets are decorated each in their individual style and there is a competition for the best one
I didn’t make it this year but went four times last August and saw concerts, danced in the streets, milled around with thousands of others and enjoyed the creativity.
The Festa Major in Barceloneta is also very lively and takes place at the end of September, often coinciding with Tangoneta
Granollers starts its Festa Major on the last Thursday of August although the preparations begin earlier in the week. It is called the Festa Major de Blancs i Blaus (whites and blues) and has this theme of different teams which are in competition with each other. The idea is recent (1983) and based on an old rivalry between brickmakers to see who could make the most bricks in an hour. But Festes Majors in Granollers date back much further than this and originally it was a festival to celebrate the patron saint of the town. In Granollers this Sant Esteve and his saint day is Boxing Day so this fiesta was known as the Festa Major d’Hivern (winter) and was celebrated with a traditional fire. But the various neighbourhoods had their summer fiestas and for example where I live they had a festival to celebrate Sants Metzes – the saints of the doctors and it was a very local party with dances and dinners and some performances.
The Festa in Granollers went into decline during the years after the Civil War and before the death of Franco. After democracy the Festa returned with new energy and plans but it wasn’t until 1983 that the idea of Blues and Whites took shape, originating from the local town council.
Now everywhere you go there are people wearing either blue or white tee-shirts
There are bars set up in the plaças which raise money for each group.
The programme of events include live music, dancing, concerts, childrens activities, Fire and Water spectacles, castles made of people climbing on each others shoulders and lots more.
So….the party is about to begin and tonight I walked down to a nearby square to watch a Bollywood dance workshop. It was warm, people milling around with children and dogs and all the family. The summer holidays are almost over but this is an extension of the holiday mood. I thought about Blues and Whites and wondered why this idea of a rivalry doesn’t really excite me and there is something a little contrived about the concept but many people seem to feel differently and join in. I began to notice how much street furniture is a combination of these colours.
At night we took a walk through the centre and came upon this monster in a dark alley – I imagine you can guess what it is!
Health Care
It’s almost a month since I last wrote a post here. What has been happening in this gap? I know with blogs that I read I start to wonder when there is a lengthy pause – where are they? have they stopped writing? are they alright?
Sometimes there are experiences that feel too complicated to describe – they don’t fit into a nice tidy box with photos and a title. This month has been like that.
We went back to the UK so that I could have a minor operation to remove a kidney stone. I would have preferred to have it done here but although I am entitled to emergency health care as a resident of the european community this does not give me the full benefits of CatSalud unless I am working here and paying social security. It is one of several bureaucratic problems that I have yet to resolve so that I can live here ‘properly’ rather than doing a balancing act between two countries.
All went well and we had a holiday in Cornwall while I recovered, returning to Granollers a full week after leaving hospital. Then, perhaps it was the journey, I started bleeding and rather heavily. I found myself in the situation I had dreaded, with no hospital notes to show doctors here, no familiar general practitioner to consult, not much energy to deal with anything and no idea if it was serious or not. On the positive side I had someone wonderful to support and take care of me while doing all the talking in Catalan and a very kind and helpful family network close by.
I have now had a lightning tour of the Catalan health service and know a bit more about how it all works. In the past I have made great use of farmacias – like our chemists but with some differences, one of which I have often been grateful for is that they will dispense some drugs without the need for a doctors prescription. I know this sounds not such a great idea but if you know what you need and use the service responsibily it can save time and energy and be very useful.
For a day or so I drank loads of water and rested as recommended by the telephone advice service. Then we went to a Centre of Urgencias. These small clinics deal with fairly straightforward minor but urgent problems. I used one in Barcelona once and found it very helpful and easier than going to a general practitioner clinic. We were seen quickly, they did a urine test, diagnosed ‘too much blood’ (rather obvious without having to use a dip stick), and sent me to the A&E department of the local hospital for an ultrasound. Everyone had warned me that there would be a long wait here and we went prepared with books and bottled water. But I had no idea that this long wait meant we would arrive at 5.30 pm and not leave till 2am.
I was lulled into a false sense of security when we were seen quickly by a nurse and she took yet another urine sample and fixed a plastic name tag around my wrist. But I clearly had not appeared sufficiently poorly and she must have given me a low ranking as we then spent many hours sitting in poorly designed plastic chairs trying not to breathe too deeply the same air as the lady with the acute respiratory infection a few seats along. She wasn’t a patient but a family member or a friend of a friend who had come along to enjoy the social life of the waiting room. People did what I have been noticing them doing here since I arrived in Catalunya – they waited without complaint or murmur. British people are known for queuing but I think Catalan people should be famous for patience while waiting. Occasionally a whole group of names would be called out over a tannoy system and a motley bunch would disappear through some swing doors. Eventually I was allowed to lie down on a trolley in a corridor and wait there. Then we were moved to a little cubicle and blood was taken very painlessly, by a nurse who hardly raised his eyes from the floor. More hours passed and eventually a conversation started up between our room and another across the corridor – after hours of waiting he was worried that as a diabetic he needed to eat something soon. Protesting voices began to sound from various cubicles – people isolated and abandoned and unable to catch any of the white blurs of nurses who occasionally whizzed past. This at least did bring a nurse and we discovered that there was no ultrasound machine so the visit started to seem pointless as well as prolonged. A very pleasant Polish doctor finally arrived, told me my blood counts were good, wrote a referral to a urologist and send me for an x-ray. Walking through the corridors on the way to X-ray I saw many of the same people from the waiting room, lying on narrow beds with a family member quietly by their side. It is totally normal here for someone to stay with you all night in hospital which seems so much more humane than a system of waiting hours and scary isolation.
We went back to the UK so that I could have a minor operation to remove a kidney stone. I would have preferred to have it done here but although I am entitled to emergency health care as a resident of the european community this does not give me the full benefits of CatSalud unless I am working here and paying social security. It is one of several bureaucratic problems that I have yet to resolve so that I can live here ‘properly’ rather than doing a balancing act between two countries.
All went well and we had a holiday in Cornwall while I recovered, returning to Granollers a full week after leaving hospital. Then, perhaps it was the journey, I started bleeding and rather heavily. I found myself in the situation I had dreaded, with no hospital notes to show doctors here, no familiar general practitioner to consult, not much energy to deal with anything and no idea if it was serious or not. On the positive side I had someone wonderful to support and take care of me while doing all the talking in Catalan and a very kind and helpful family network close by.
I have now had a lightning tour of the Catalan health service and know a bit more about how it all works. In the past I have made great use of farmacias – like our chemists but with some differences, one of which I have often been grateful for is that they will dispense some drugs without the need for a doctors prescription. I know this sounds not such a great idea but if you know what you need and use the service responsibily it can save time and energy and be very useful.
For a day or so I drank loads of water and rested as recommended by the telephone advice service. Then we went to a Centre of Urgencias. These small clinics deal with fairly straightforward minor but urgent problems. I used one in Barcelona once and found it very helpful and easier than going to a general practitioner clinic. We were seen quickly, they did a urine test, diagnosed ‘too much blood’ (rather obvious without having to use a dip stick), and sent me to the A&E department of the local hospital for an ultrasound. Everyone had warned me that there would be a long wait here and we went prepared with books and bottled water. But I had no idea that this long wait meant we would arrive at 5.30 pm and not leave till 2am.
I was lulled into a false sense of security when we were seen quickly by a nurse and she took yet another urine sample and fixed a plastic name tag around my wrist. But I clearly had not appeared sufficiently poorly and she must have given me a low ranking as we then spent many hours sitting in poorly designed plastic chairs trying not to breathe too deeply the same air as the lady with the acute respiratory infection a few seats along. She wasn’t a patient but a family member or a friend of a friend who had come along to enjoy the social life of the waiting room. People did what I have been noticing them doing here since I arrived in Catalunya – they waited without complaint or murmur. British people are known for queuing but I think Catalan people should be famous for patience while waiting. Occasionally a whole group of names would be called out over a tannoy system and a motley bunch would disappear through some swing doors. Eventually I was allowed to lie down on a trolley in a corridor and wait there. Then we were moved to a little cubicle and blood was taken very painlessly, by a nurse who hardly raised his eyes from the floor. More hours passed and eventually a conversation started up between our room and another across the corridor – after hours of waiting he was worried that as a diabetic he needed to eat something soon. Protesting voices began to sound from various cubicles – people isolated and abandoned and unable to catch any of the white blurs of nurses who occasionally whizzed past. This at least did bring a nurse and we discovered that there was no ultrasound machine so the visit started to seem pointless as well as prolonged. A very pleasant Polish doctor finally arrived, told me my blood counts were good, wrote a referral to a urologist and send me for an x-ray. Walking through the corridors on the way to X-ray I saw many of the same people from the waiting room, lying on narrow beds with a family member quietly by their side. It is totally normal here for someone to stay with you all night in hospital which seems so much more humane than a system of waiting hours and scary isolation.
The next day we made a same day appointment to see a specialist privately. The office was more comfortable for waiting but we were still there for three hours. The urologist was a very pleasant man who agreed that this bleeding was not the norm and offered to arrange an ultrasound in the next week – it will be done in the general health system again and back in the local hospital. Meanwhile I am feeling much better and thinking that when I get my energy back I must look for work so I can receive full health care here. For more information click HERE
Next post I hope will be about Festes Majors – the summer parties that are now in full swing.
Songs
Here are two Catalan songs we did in the summer school. If you click on the titles you can see them sung on YouTube – not by us as I haven’t learnt how to upload videos yet but it gives the idea.
And you can see examples of the clothes children wear when doing messy things in the art class. They are called ‘batas’ but due to the very similar sound between v and b I always heard it as Waters.
Mariners Com Que Bufa El Vent
Mariners com que bufa el vent. Cantem tots una cançoneta, Mariners com que bufa el vent Cantem tots un petit moment I la veu del petit grumet pujarà fins dalt de la cofa. I la veu del petit grumet sonarà com un vell concert.
Mireu Allà Dalt
Mireu allà dalt en els estels que hi ha
És un gros animal Que en bicicleta va
És un elefant I doncs que us penseu!
Té una cua al darrera i una otra al davant.
This one is done with lovely hand actions and I have sung it many times since – there is something about it that never fails to make me laugh. We did it much better than these people but the only other video I found showed a class of such small ones that they could hardly sing let alone mime.
A rough translation is – Look up there in the stars there is a big animal, riding a bicycle.
It’s an elefant and what to think? It has one tail at the back and another at the front!
Les Dones D’Aigua
Today was the last day of the summer school and as always we finished with a performance showing off some of the things we learnt over the week. The theme of the whole course was La Natura. The first week was Air, second Earth and third and last Water. It seemed a good idea to skip Fire as the children in general have enough Fire energy to fill all the weeks one hundred times over.
This week there were seven children and all girls. It felt easy after the boisterous busy boom-bang-bang days that went before. And it gave us the chance to do a story about Les Dones D’Aigua – the seductive sirens who live near the rivers in Montseny.
We danced with cintes – blue and shimmery and painted by the girls
We played string instruments
and rainmakers made out of tubes and filled with sand and shells.
The story was of a village where the people used water without caring how much they wasted. Each girl had a story – washing dishes with a running tap, watering the garden, filling up the swimming pool, flushing the toilet too often ….then one day the water ran out. They decided to go and see the Dones D’Aigua dressed in skirts of ribbon which we made the day before – the workshop is a fairyland with shelves of rolls of ribbon from the family business……
They in turn suggested visiting the Rain Goddess and after a long journey to find her
( a chance to sing Row Row Row Your Boat in english) they were promised rain if they agreed to be more careful with water. Back in the village the rain drops began and turned into a torrent and all ended happily.
The stage looked beautiful. What last week was a banana tree sheltering the Tribe of Dogs now became a Rock with a waterfall where the Dones D’Aigua lived
Everyone forgot their lines and had to be prompted which was very charming, the story about not being able to flush the toilet after doing a ‘caca’ got a big laugh, noone fell over, the whole thing probably lasted about 15 minutes and it was a delight.
This was something I felt nervous about taking on but I have enjoyed it so much and remembered many things that I used to do as a child and now have a chance to do again
And Duna wasn’t left out. She came to visit several times and helped some of the girls overcome their fear of dogs – really fear – two of them jumped on chairs when they saw her the first time!
And I can’t resist this picture of Clara showing how it is done with three or four hoola-hoops!