June 23 Wed Barcelona and St Johns Festival

David was working today and Gemma enjoying a day off and preparation for the Festival of St John, Catalonia’s biggest annual festival. Each year this festival celebrates the shortest night of the year and welcomes in summer and the longest day. Communities gather, bringing food for a shared meal (if four of you come, you bring food for six!) which doesn’t start till sundown (9.30ish). There’s a small fee which buys wine for the tables plus generous helpings of their St John’s cake “Coca” , (a cross between bread and Madeira Cake, decorated with glace fruit and pine nuts) which is washed down with Cava. Cava is what we would know as French Champagne (Moet). Same grapes, same terrain, same process, same company; just not allowed to be called champagne since the border shifted between France and Spain! The festival is a great celebration, with fireworks, bonfires (if you’re on the beach or somewhere safe) feasting, drinking, music and dancing till dawn (if you’re still on the go when the dew falls in the morning you’ll grow younger – wait till you see me next!!!).
With a day at our disposal Fred and I headed for Barcelona for a brief look at this exciting City. We also needed to buy tickets to travel back from Spain to Narbonne early on Friday to link up with Bruce and Diana. Thankfully we had Gemma translating with the woman at the ticket office as the only words we could understand were “bloody French” as she explained that we’d need to try for tickets in Barcelona, but that the French rail workers were on strike till Friday morning, which in fact wiped out any train service from Spain to France till Friday lunch time. So, to Barcelona, where after three discussions with the ticket sellers, three times in the queue and a couple of phone conferences with Bruce we were sorted and off to explore the City.
Barcelona is amazing! What a vibrant, energising City! Wide tree lined streets with totally specific cycle lanes and bikes you can buy an annual pass to use! Once again plane trees march architecturally down the streets, but being interspersed with palm trees moves the image from the European cliché, to a much more southern Mediterranean look. Once again it’s a city with history but a city of fascinating shapes and colours. The city was originally laid out thoughtfully and then modernised completely with the refurbishment for the 1992 Olympic Games. 100,000 volunteers gave time and labour in the lead up to the Games; no wonder the City hums with a sense of pride and worth! Apparently one of the biggest challenges now is how to deal with the huge numbers of tourists and visitors attracted here, while still keeping Barcelona a comfortable and pleasant home and workplace for its own residents.
With just a few hours here we opted for a bus tour through the City. Fantastic seats on the open top deck gave us great views and the commentary was fantastic so we managed to cram in many of the sights plus lunch of filled and folded flatbreads cooked on a huge hotplate (four cheese filling for Fred, mozarella and spinach for me) before our time ran out. By this stage one of Fred’s sandals had fallen apart and my need for a haircut was becoming pressing so with a detour through a monster department store we sorted both problems and were back on the train for Rupia (or Flaca actually – the little station nearest to Rupia).
Our timing was ideal with just time to freshen up before heading into the village with our plates, cutlery, glasses and pot luck dish for the celebrations. What a buzz! Every local, man, woman and child was there, plus most of the weekenders who had come up to Rupia for the weekend (tomorrow is a holiday and most people have taken Friday off to make a long weekend). Crackers - mostly bangers, including very big bangers which are now unavailable in NZ- were going off intermittently, most of them let off by the children. The biggest impact ones were let off resoundlingly in the stone “tunnel” made by an arch about 25 feet long over the lane! If you ever come to Spain Dan I really think you should aim to be here 23rd June!
As darkness fell the “pretty” fireworks came out and the littlies had fun with sparklers. As with any pot luck meal there was an amazing variety of dishes and so we were very fortunate to have an opportunity to sample all sorts of wonderful dishes and the coca was yummy and the Cava supreme!
Then the music started and soon everyone was up dancing. No one went home. Parents danced and socialised with babies in front packs, preschoolers were tucked up on the warm stone benches as they fell asleep, the junior school girls danced and cartwheeled on the cobblestones while the bigger girls teased the boys who then terrorised them with crackers.
Dew or no dew, we were home well before dawn though we did need to shut all doors, windows and shutters to keep out the noise of explosions! Gemma and David enjoyed the company and fun considerably longer, leaving at dawn as others were doing a Trinny and Susannah on the barman.