La mercè

They had the coolest festival in Barcelona last weekend!

They had parades of giants and people with big heads right down Carrer Farran which is the closest street to us that allows car traffic (although it’s usually plugged with pedestrians and tooting cars and scooters). The parade just marched down the middle of the street, (well, more like the whole street since it’s so narrow) and the people at the front just pushed people out of the way. I liked the relaxed approach of their parade organisation here. There were more over the weekend and I didn’t seen any parade marshals, gates to hold people back, or formal seating. We just stood with our backs to the buildings lining the street to watch the people go by and occasionally joined in the parade!

We followed the parade of giants and big heads down the street until it reached plaça sant jaume where the band (made up of drums, and reed instruments) began to play on the stage and the giants did dances. Later, there was the parade of fire breathing dragons up a really narrow street that was barely wide enough for the parade plus one line of spectators. We felt really ‘in the mix’ and could really get into it! Yea! The smoke from the sparks was so thick sometimes that we couldn’t tell what was coming next.. sometimes it would be a scary fire-breathing beast.. or a wicked drum band that made you want to dance.

There was also fireworks every night at the barcelonetta beach and free concerts in every public space big enough for at least 30 people to congregate.



One morning they had towers of strength in placa sant jaume! This was somewhat like the greasepole from my frosh week.. but this was a cleaner, multi-generational, serious cultural affair! The plaça is paved with hard cobblestones, but they formed towers of up to 8 people high! They look impressive in this picture, (and there are others on Arif’s site) but it was really quite frightening to watch them! The whole tower would be shaking or swaying if someone was getting tired, and they actually fell a couple of times! All of the people in the square would gasp every time someone even wavered, and we had to leave early because we were getting too tense and light headed from holding our breath. The child on the top would only be about 4 or 5 years old!

Then there was the Corre Foc: the fire run. This they did twice; once in the afternoon for children, and once in the evening for adults (that's right, children running with fire... my childhood was so tame....). The Corre Foc basically consists of people dressed all in cotton with little hoods with horns on them, running around with poles that have spark-shooting firecrackers on the end. It gets more spectacular when they put multiple firecrackers on at the same time. When the firecrackers stop shooting sparks, they pop really loudly, so a crowd of these people dancing towards you is quite exciting and noisy. (there was also the occasional drum-only bands which were fun to dance to) We all would have smelled like gunpowder if it hadn’t been raining so hard.

I learned on that night that one mojito is often enough.. they’re so tasty, but so wicked. The next morning I was wakened at 10am by what sounded like a continuous barrage of a building just a few streets over. The cannonfire went on for about 30minutes.. I think it was revenge by the elders on us party goers whose nightly concerts usually end at around 4-5am. Barcelona is supposed to be the noisiest city in Europe, and this weekend takes the cake.. they have a real romance with gunpowder here.

The final event of the weekend was a fireworks display set to jazz music. The show went on for 40 minutes!! It was spectacular, and perfectly timed to the rhythm and beats. I wish all of you could have been there for it.. I wish I could describe more, but there are no words...