Culture and Customs

Market Day in Figueres

~ Kate Wilson ~ 1 Comment

Up bright and early to go on the school run to Figueres. Bonnie was a bit surprised to be leaving the house at 7.30am when it was still dark.

We had a wander around the market watching them set up their stalls. It was much quieter than the market in Granollers – people standing around chatting rather than shouting at the top of their voices.
But to be fair perhaps they are like that in Granollers too at 8am – I have never been to look!

In the vegetable market there is a large sculpture of George and the Dragon – both looking strong and proud – forever caught in that moment before the fight begins. I much prefer it to depictions of the dragon losing the battle. But whatever George thinks – that Dragon will always rise again!

Beside the police station with it’s Spanish flag there is a window with the Catalan one

A Figueres hotel welcomes old cows like me!  In the Taurean sense of the word.
As we left town it began to rain – I can’t remember the last time it did – and as usual most people had umbrellas handy – except us!
Yesterday we took the Blue Dog sculpture down to sit in place beside Blue’s grave.

A very peaceful place to sit and dream.

Writing Christmas Cards

~ Kate Wilson ~ 2 Comments

Some people hate this job but I have always loved it – it’s one of the highlights of Christmas for me.
I don’t like the consumerism and I get anxious buying presents for people when I don’t really know what they would like.  Christmas dinner with someone else’s family can be awkward for a foreign vegetarian and although  I try to stop myself I can still get a bit panicky and buy too much food on Christmas Eve even though I know there will always be shops open the day after.
What I like about Christmas is not easy to find in Catalunya.
  • Singing Christmas carols with other people
  • Opening Christmas stockings in your dressing gown in the morning
  • Celebrating with a delicious vegetarian meal on Christmas day
  • Spending a few precious days with good friends, playing games, preparing meals, reading in front of a log fire.
  • Being with my dog as it is her Christmas too
  • Going for a country or seaside walk on Boxing Day
  • Doing nothing much on Boxing Day
  • Celebrating something called Boxing Day rather than Sant Esteve and remembering my parents who got married on this day

Last year we came close to this ideal when we went to Sant Nicolau in the Emporda.  Just the three of us and Bonnie.  It was great for me but the Catalan family were not too pleased that we opted out. So this year it is back to the old routine and family visits every day from the 24th to the 26th.

But nothing and no-one can stop me making and sending Christmas cards.  It is not a tradition here so I don’t expect to receive many unless they are sent from the UK.  Being abroad also changes your friendship patterns and every year I get fewer cards in the post. But I still continue to send them out to everyone I feel warm towards and want to keep in touch with.  I like going through my address book and thinking of each person as I write the card.  It gives me a chance to stand back and take a look at my friendships and my family.
What changes are there this year?
Some people have drifted off. Some have sadly died and I can take time to think of them as well. There are people from many different areas of my past – Scotland, London, Cornwall, Barcelona, internet friends, old lovers, tango partners.  Some of them are people I hardly ever see any more but they still are woven into the fabric of my life and my heart

This year we made our own cards and for the first time had them printed more professionally at Marc the stationers down the road. They look much better than usual for which I thank Nuria for her wonderful and inspiring painting classes, Pep for helping me with final tweeking on the computer and Marc for doing such a good job with the laser printer.

I wish I had kept copies of past years productions.
But then again, better to live in the present and let go of what has gone before. This year I have written 34 cards, most of them heading off to the UK, a few for friends here in Catalunya and the rest off to Germany, France, Italy, Holland, Canada and the USA.  Tomorrow morning I will be at the Correo offices in Granollers before heading off again to Sant Nicolau with Bonnie for some more fresh air and country peace.
Anyone fancy a chocolate caganer?

Seen in a bakers window in Sant Celoni.

Bonnie is the Star!

~ Kate Wilson ~ 3 Comments

  • A sunny Saturday and I took Bonnie out in the car.   We took the windy route over the hills towards the sea which is one of my favourites as most of the traffic goes the other quicker way.  People drive faster here perhaps because most of them have have been driving these same roads all their lives. If you don’t move far from where you were born you probably know each and every bend. And if you assume that all other drivers are similarly confident you won’t have much patience with ditherers like me. 

 

  • At the top of the hills there is a derelict petrol station and if you turn off there it leads to a quiet country lane with views down to the sea.  We parked and walked. There were lots of cyclists around who surprised me with their total disregard for the large signs warning that the hunters were out shooting wild boar in the woods. 

 

  • In the local newspaper El Nou they recently reported a cyclist being clipped by a bullet as he rode along a popular route in Les Franqueses.  Five hunters were stopped by the police and their guns taken away as evidence. These hunts are normally approved by the authorities but they are supposed to keep away from houses and roads. That local council has even been discussing banning hunting as it is impossible for it to coexist with the growing numbers of people who like to walk, cycle, run in the countryside.  But they finally decided that banning it would only make it less regulated.  Hunting is very popular throughout Catalunya and I once had lunch at a country restaurant with a truck parked outside loaded up with a very large and dead wild boar.  I wonder what it would take for the Catalan government to ban it altogether?

 

  • We sat down for a while with the sound of shots ringing in the far distance. Bonnie brought me a twig and as my main task now to keep her as happy as possible,  I broke my normal rule of not throwing sticks. It was also a very soft one! She is totally back to normal after the surgery  

 

  • It was a joy to watch her jumping to catch it like a puppy

Watching TV

~ Kate Wilson ~ 2 Comments
Watching television can be stressful in a multi-cultural home.
Many people argue about what channel to watch or whether a certain programme is enjoyable or rubbish. But if you add in different languages and cultural differences it gets more complicated.
I actually feel guilty for watching British TV.
I tend to switch it on when there is no-one else at home. I don’t like to impose it on others but on top of that I have my own judgements about watching English language programmes when I ‘should’ be improving my Catalan or Spanish.

If I am tired or stressed then it is such a huge comfort to watch something like Downton Abbey, or Have I Got News for You? or even Antiques Road Show.  But I notice a tendency to apologise if someone else comes into the room and catches me at it.

It is one of the things that I wouldn’t experience if I was living in the UK.  Perhaps if I lived here with another native English speaker it would be a shared guilty pleasure?  Or if I lived here alone I might still feel a bit embarassed with a slight sense of failure that I hadn’t adapted properly.  But I would still do it.

I do watch Catalan TV and late at night there are often good documentaries and films. But I have never discovered any programmes like for example, Last Tango in Halifax which was on a couple of nights ago.  I put it on after a friend alerted me by text and then had to grit my teeth and ignore sighs of incomprehension from the other end of the sofa.  Humour is the worst problem….it is so hard to shift it across cultural lines and so when I laugh, I often laugh alone. I notice that the longer I am away from Britain, the better I think the programmes are.  Is this some kind of exiled delusion?

At 11pm I can catch the news at 10 on the BBC.  Then we switch back to the Catalan news which seems to be all about politicians or Barça football matches.  No-one gets challenged or pressed for answers and I don’t hear the journalists making dry comments in their introductions or analysis.
TV3 is funded by the government so I suppose it is true that he who pays the piper calls the tune. 
It is really difficult when you live in another country to stop yourself making comparisons. Have I turned into one of those people who just gripes about things being better at home?
It is hard to know if I am just influenced by a love of the familiar or if I am really making a detached comparison.  Perhaps the answer is to have two televisions and for me to just enjoy watching what I want without apology?  And then I could enjoy the Catalan and Spanish programmes too.
I try to straddle two worlds trying to feel at home in both yet sometimes ending up comfortable in neither.
After thought
Perhaps I would find it easier if the ‘other’ language wasn’t Catalan. It is so easy to feel sensitive about silencing this language, even if only by switching the TV to satellite and the BBC.

Panallets

~ Kate Wilson ~ 1 Comment

The place where we had our celebration breakfast in Sabadell yesterday had a bakers shop upstairs and a cafe in the basement.  They had arranged the downstairs space very cleverly and along one side there was a huge window looking onto a tiny narrow patio with natural light and plants so you didn’t feel like you were in a dark lifeless cellar.  On the other wall there was also a window dividing the seating area from the kitchen and in the kitchen there were three people making panallets

What are panallets?
They are little sweet cakes which are the traditional dessert on the holiday of All Saints, otherwise known as the Castanyada.  They are often served with a sweet wine such as Vi Ranci – we have a couple of lovely bottles of that in the cupboard. It comes from Falset

Panallets are made from almonds and sugar and the most traditional ones are covered in pine nuts. The shops are full of them just now and we also have all the ingredients to make some of our own this weekend!  If it works out I will take photos and put the recipe on here