Barcelona Christmas Fair: Santa Llúcia

In Barcelona, from the 3rd to the 23rd of December, there’s a popular Christmas Fair in the square ( it’s the Avinguda de la Catedral really) in front of the Cathedral. Known as the Fira de Santa Llúcia, it has been held every year since 1786 and has always been very popular.
Santa Llúcia is patron Saint of the Blind (she was a martyr and —well, you can guess the rest…) also, according to the great documentarist of Catalan folklore, Joan Amades, she is also patron of “tailors, seamstresses and all those who live by the prick of their needles”.

Barcelona Christmas Fair

People would go to the Chapel of Santa Llúcia to pray for the preservation and improvement (or recovery) of their eyesight, and then visit the stalls selling clay and paper figures, images of saints and other seasonal wares. (Those who could see what they were doing, I suppose…)
In those less free and easy times, the Fair was also very popular among young unmarried women, who —accompanied by their mothers and dressed up to the nines— strolled around the stalls in the hope of finding a husband. Possibly they also hoped there would be an abundance of short-sighted men at the Fira.

Barcelona Christmas Fair

Today, (husbands being ten a penny on the Internet)  people mostly throng to buy the traditional Christmas Nativity scene figurines, Christmas decorations and the seasonal plants, bouquets and herbs. Although a fairly recent introduction, pine Christmas trees with their baubles, decorations and lights are fast gaining ground. So are the northern invaders Santa Claus and his minions, nowadays seen intrepidly scaling the balconies of L’Eixample and other areas in Barcelona.

Christmas Plants bring luck and prosperity

The Ponsettia “Christmas” plant with its striking red leaves —an essential element for prosperity and happiness when given as a well intentioned gift— is a long-standing  popular favourite. Mistletoe, hung somewhere by the front door at New Year and replaced the following year when the old sprig must be burned, is given to friends and family bring luck to the house.

I remember when my daughter was small, how she would love to add one or two new figures to our nativity scene and decorations every year. We’d sit down together and she’d delight in planning where to put all the characters and the pieces, checking what we had, deciding what we’d need and …”Can we have a little bulb for a fire this year?”
We’d go down to Fira, (for some strange reason 500,000 others did this at precisely the same time!) struggle to reach the stalls and buy a little well, bridge, donkey or group of villagers., Then we’d walk through the Gothic Quarter, and stop in Carrer Petrixol for some hot chocolate and buns before taking the Ferrocarrils back home.
Once back, we’d set up the “Belen” as it’s known here, in a spot where all Christmas visitors dropping round for wassail and a warm welcome could admire it, compare it to theirs and, inwardly, secretly and comfortingly, decide that —while yours is very good, aesthetically pleasing, impressive even and admirable in all ways— their own was much… well, much more “theirs”.
This is still a popular pastime and has much to recommend it.

El Caganer
One of the most well-loved but unusual (from an outsider’s point of view) is the figure of the “Caganer” a little Catalan peasant, barretina (Catalan cap) on his head, discreetly crouching (usually behind or to the side of the grotto) with his trousers around his ankles, an expression of placid contemplation on his little features and a small pyramid of poop under his bare buttocks.

Many are the erudite theories on his origins and significance:  the indifference of the material world to the transcendent occurrences close by? Man giving back nourishment to the earth so nature is renewed? A symbolic gesture to ensure prosperity, health  and so a new family “Belen” next year? A representation of the Catalan character, too practical to put off material needs and waste fertiliser, despite the supreme spiritual event taking place? Who knows, but of all the figures —some revered, some worshipped, some lovingly despised (if you happen to have Roman soldiers)— not one is so popularly admired, loved and cherished as the Caganer.

“It’s all very well but, where’s the Caganer” is perhaps the first  thing you say to yourself when admiring a Belen. And there he always is, quiet, content, concentrated; fag or pipe in mouth perhaps, occasionally a newspaper in his hand for immediate cultural advancement and posterior cleanliness… Let us not now discuss the significance of what he reads and what he does with it.

As you can imagine, popular culture and humour ensures the Caganer is not limited to a mere Medieval peasant, no matter how significant.
There are as many ways to reach the sublime status of Caganer as there are to become celebrated, famous, infamous or universally admired: A Caganer admired and revered? Josep Guardiola. Popular heroes? All the Barça team. A current celebrity? Take your choice. Despised? Jose Mourinho.

Figures of universal esteem and admiration? Dalai Lama. Ridiculous? Too many to mention and a question of taste. International figures? Barack Obama, Michael Jackson, Politicians, (there are so many in Catalunya that they need their own shelf on the stands) musicians, actors… Timeless icons like Elvis, the Queen of England. Dark Side Villains like Darth Vader.
They’re all there, all reduced by the common human need to give back to the earth that which they have taken, perhaps a forewarning that one day, we shall all give back, finally, fully and forever, all we have taken, all that we have and all that we are…

Merry Christmas

Exhibition of Caganers in Artesania de Catalunya.

The Exhibition, organised by Amics del Caganer shows top quality hand made Caganers ranging from the traditional
Catalan in his barretina to comic-book figures, Santa Claus and Coco the Clown.
You can see the Exhibition in the Carrer Banys Nous, 11. (934 674 660)
The Centre ony opens in the mornings on holidays.

As usual, political figures past and present are widely represented. Here is a circle of
Catalan politicians. The chap in the centre with a self-satisfied expression has just won the Catalan elections. The three crouching together were the leaders of the failed Tri-partit or  Three party Coalition. I bet they wish they had worked as intimitely and closely during their tenure instead of squabbling and jockeying for position.

See here for more on Christmas in Barcelona