caganer

Vermut and Kisses

~ Kate Wilson ~ 3 Comments

Last night there was a big jazz band playing at the Casino and about a 100 people came to dance Swing and Lindy Hop.  As you might know, I am learning Swing in Barcelona but I don’t have much chance to practise so I was quite excited.  Granollers swinging at last.
And the best thing is that my friend Montse Marti is going to start teaching classes here in Granollers. After Easter I will be going there and am very happy that Pep is going to come too!
For more information go to Bigpotters Swing on Faceboook.

This is a Virtual Vermut so here is a sign I saw in Barcelona last Monday when I went up for my Swing class.

Vins Cava Vermut i Petons!    Wine Cava Vermouth and Kisses!

This tiny bar with the sign is in the Barri Gotic and is owned by a  Scottish lady called Katherine who has a cheese shop and decided to expand into the the space next door to create a simple bar with wine and cheese.   After many many years of living in Barcelona, she still has a beautiful rich Scottish accent. And of course she speaks Catalan and Spanish as well.

Sometimes I take Bonnie for walks around the town, looking for old buildings and signs of Granollers history. This was an old  liqueur factory, now derelict.  I like this style of sign writing; there is a lot of it in Granollers.  It’s in Spanish as you can see from Montaña which would be written as Montanya in Catalan.
An Arab woman happened to be passing by when I took the photo.  I read in the local paper today that while the last ten years have seen a huge increase in the number of immigrants here in Valles Oriental, in the last year there has been a decrease.   This is due to the fact that people who came from Latin America are now returning home. Work is hard to come by here and in Latin America there is a strengthening economy.   Over 18% of the population of Granollers are from other countries originally.  By immigrants I mean all people who are not of Spanish nationality, including me!

Two other stories from the week
1/ Ant invasion
The ants have come back. We have tried everything but they are winning. Sometimes they withdraw to build up strength and numbers for the next campaign. But they never really go away.
We cleaned out the cupboards yet again

We spread cinnamon around all the entry points

We hung bay leaves as apparently they don’t like the smell

We squished with our fingers the scouts that they send out in advance of the main army
And of course we have tried to negotiate and ask them to go away.
They are fascinating creatures – if you get down close and watch them it becomes very hard to do them harm.

2/ Drawings

Pep did a clown performance and helped present prizes at a drawing competition for the local cancer charity. Before Christmas children had done drawings of…..guess what?  Yes, caganers,  the Catalan addition to all Nativity scenes. So we wandered around looking at about one hundred depictions of little red capped men – shitting!    I am sure the children had a great time!

So that’s it for this week. Happy March to you all!

Nativity Scene Live from Navata!

~ Kate Wilson ~ 1 Comment

Navata, a town near Figueres, has a Living Nativity Scene tonight

I totally misunderstood the publicity and so we arrived at 7.30 and were almost the only people passing through and had to hurry along as the living statues were getting tired and chilly and wanted a break. I still don’t understand what was the correct time to arrive but in the end gave up trying to get to the bottom of it. Sometimes these problems with TIME happen here and you just have to shrug and walk away.
It was a bit surreal walking through the narrow streets, peering into rooms and trying not to catch the eyes of the statues who were obviously trying to pretend they existed in another dimension. It felt a bit rude to just stare or take a photo but when we tried smiling and saying hello, they would ignore us.
It’s a really pretty village and there were lots of scenes, very interesting in a surreal sort of way.
The sheep were great but there was no donkey in the stable.

Here is our walk through the live but not very lively nativity scenes of Navata.

It was amazing and interesting – but also slightly weird.
There was a Caganer of course but guess what?

He wasn’t a real person!

What a disappointment!

My third christmas

~ Kate Wilson ~ 1 Comment

Christmas has been and gone and I haven’t written anything.
Nothing about the beating of the Tio, nor the traditional Catalan Christmas dinner of Escudella i carn d’olla.  I haven’t shown you the Christmas market in Barcelona nor the nativity scene in Plaça St Jaume.  No photos of bubbling cava or delicious turrons……nothing!  Res!  Niente!  Nada!
Sorry. I have just been so involved in getting the dogs settled here in their new home and trying to find a rhythm that allows me time for myself between sorties to the plaça with anxious Bonnie, hyperactive Duna or slow Blue or some combination of those three. I haven’t been to Barcelona at all and I didn’t go to  beat the Tio and sing ‘El Noi de la Mare’ this year.
But I did finally make it into Granollers centre to look at the Christmas market. It’s not really very exciting compared to the Santa Lucia one in Barcelona but I did take a good look at the figures for the all important nativity scenes and bought a little set for home

I remember unpacking the nativity scene was one of the lovely parts of Christmas in Troon when I was young. We used to set them up inside a toy garage which must have deeply influenced my idea of the stable in Bethlehem.
If you have been following this blog at all you’ll know that Catalunya has a strong tradition of scatalogical customs. the beating of the Tio is to make it shit presents. and in the nativity scenes, the pessebres, there must be somewhere hidden a caganer, a little man with his trousers down shitting in the bushes

I bought one of these for a friend but couldn’t decide on one for our pessebre so for the moment it has only Josep, Maria, Jesus, a donkey, (by the way did you know the donkey or burro has been adopted as a symbol of Catalunya and many cars have a bumper sticker with one on it?) and a cow, una vaca. Oh and an angel of course!

Christmas dinner was lovely this year and I have to say much easier now that I can speak a little more Catalan. I took my  own nut roast and ate parts of the typical Catalan dinner.

Of course there was Cava – here’s a glass with icecream mixed in
And a tower of turrons to be carefully demolished like an edible pikastix

The other reason I didn’t write too much was because it’s taken me a bit of time to get settled back in here after all the turmoil of the move and three months in Cornwall where of course I feel totally at ease. I have had some days of feeling like this

but now that the stress of Nadal and Sant Esteve is past I seem to be sniffing the air and, like Blue, finding it full of interesting smells