The shops are full of red underwear – it’s a Spanish custom to wear new red pants on New Years Eve to bring good luck. You can’t just go and buy them – they need to be a gift!  When I say Spanish I mean the tradition comes from outside Catalunya but seems to be every more popular here, at least from what I see in shop windows!

The other new custom for me to integrate is the eating of twelve grapes as the clock strikes midnight. So add that to the whisky and Auld Lang Syne and first footing with coal and salt….. it is a busy night.

WELCOME 2011

Walking to the shops is a daily activity here and on Thursdays when it is market day everyone comes out accompanied by their trusty shopping trolley. I have always liked wheelie baskets and had one in Penzance which I rarely used as everyone teased me about being a little old lady. Here however it is normal to have one and you have a lot of choice about model and design. When I first arrived in Barcelona in July 2009 I used to borrow one from my friend and became very attached to it.
How much easier to potter around the shops and carry stuff back to the flat without plastic bag handles digging into your fingers.

In most shops you have to leave your trolley at the front door and in supermarkets there are special parking stations with locks in case you worry about theft.
For a while I used a small one which was a free gift from the optitions.

But the wheels made such a racquet on the pavement that everyone stared at me (even more than they usually do for my fair hair and blue eyes) and I couldn’t hear the music on my ipod.
There is another one here at home which is interesting and practical but also a bit bulky and heavy for everyday shopping.

 So I bought myself a new one. We walk together in total silence and I feel I have a companion on my shopping trips!

I’ve been busy this last week getting ready for a Christmas party and also making and sending off cards. I have always preferred receiving cards to presents at Christmas but one unexpected result of moving to another country is that you don’t get so many lovely little envelopes dropping through the front door. People here don’t have this custom at all so if you are someone who hates the chore then this is a great place to live!  But for me it is one of my favourite parts of Christmas.
I tried to do it all early this year, making my own cards and printing out sheets of labels with my address to cunningly stick on the back. Desperate measures!

 The first two that arrived here were both pictures of hares – next year is the Chinese year of the Rabbit so perhaps this is the connection. I don’t know if it is a general trend or just a coincidence.
This is my second Christmas here (xmas 2009 see here)  and I found to my surprise that I was feeling a little nostalgic for homey things. All those years of wanting to escape the Christmas pressure and yet here I am after such a short time finding that I want a Christmas tree and crackers.

So I invited a few English speaking friends with their Catalan partners to come and have dinner and have a Fusion Christmas party. We put together ideas of what we like to do at Christmas and ended up with a lovely evening last night with songs like the Twelve Days of Christmas and El Noi de la Mare. There is a story that this Catalan song was the last one played by Segovia before his death, the music was on his music stand.
We had a passebre, beat presents out of the Tió (as you see we have the most basic Tió possible, a log with a blanket over it which Duna decided was her best friend), ate a vegetarian roast dinner with Christmas pudding and custard, pulled crackers, drank Cava and were too full to eat a homemade Christmas cake, in true Christmas tradition.  I felt the Catalan male partners were a bit bemused by it all (and especially by the typed up timetable of events!!! very unmediterranean)  but the female party planners were very happy with how it all went.

 Preparing the room for the party was almost as good as the event itself. I found rolls and rolls of beautiful silky fabric from the old days of the textile factory and made drapes and decorations to warm the room.