Roses, Books, and Catalanisme: La Diada de Sant Jordi

{{Por eso esperaba, con la carita empapada, a que llegaras con rosas, con mil rosas para mi}}

Friday, April 23, was the Diada de Sant Jordi, or Saint George's Day in English, one of the most important holidays in Catalunya. Sant Jordi is the patron saint of Catalunya, and they go truly all-out to celebrate his day. According to the legend, there was once a town that a dragon descended upon and began to ravish. To placate the dragon, the inhabitants agreed to hold a lottery to sacrifice a person to the dragon each day. One day the name of the princess, who was loved by all the inhabitants, was called, and because the king was a just man and the princess brave, they refused to let another be sacrificed in her place. But as she stood waiting for the dragon to come and take her away, Sant Jordi arrived on a white horse to fight off the dragon (some say the dragon first carried away the princess and Sant Jordi rescued her from its cave). When Sant Jordi slayed the dragon, the most beautiful rosebush ever grew from its blood, and Sant Jordi gave the princess a rose before riding away. For this reason, one of the traditions of la Diada de Sant Jordi is for all men to give women a rose (mainly for couples, but good friends do this as well).

The tradition of giving books arose as an idea of a bookseller in the 1930s, who promoted this as a special day to sell books because both Shakespeare and Cervantes died on the 23rd of April. Traditionally women give men books, but that has also changed, with people buying books for their loved ones in general, or for themselves. The great majority of Catalunya's book sales occur the 23rd and the days before Sant Jordi. Stalls selling books and roses are set up all across the city, with the highest density (and prices) concentrated on Las Ramblas, authors sign books at all the major bookstores, and everyone gets into the spirit of reading and giving.

One reason that Sant Jordi is such an important figure for Catalunya is that he, in a way, represents the fight of Catalunya against Spain itself, in terms of preserving its culture, traditions, language, and national pride. Sant Jordi represents Catalanisme, the struggle of the small power against the large.

Las Ramblas was the most crowded I have ever seen it, a complete flood of people holding roses and browsing booksellers, music, smiles, and festivities. Even though Sant Jordi is not technically a holiday day and people still have to work, most still find a way to escape from their jobs at least for a bit and enjoy the festive atmosphere. I enjoyed some of the famous pan de Sant Jordi, which is a small loaf bread made with stripes of cheese bread and bread with some sort of pepper, so that, if you cut it properly, it has yellow and red stripes like the Catalan flag. Mine was perfect because it had just come out of the oven when I bought it and was perfectly warm and soft inside with a lovely crunch on the crust. I wish they made it the rest of the year too!

For la Diada de Sant Jordi, the government of Catalunya opens two major government buildings--La Palau de la Generalitat and the building of the Ajuntament--to the public to walk through and gain a better understanding of what is behind the walls of their government buildings. I went in both of them and they were absolutely stunning. The Ajuntament, where the offices of the governor of Barcelona are located, along with other official offices, was an absolutely stunning building; ornate, richly decorated, with priceless art covering the walls, beautiful painted scenes depicting the history of Catalunya or anecdotes about justice and truth. The Palau de la Generalitat was less impressive at first (more technical spaces with places for the press and for meetings of the Generalitat de Catalunya), but as we wandered further we discovered great rooms with statues and paintings and carvings of Sant Jordi (I found 15, and I'm sure there are more), and then later a gigantic chapel with magnificent paintings of monumental moments in the history of Spain and Catalunya (such as Columbus' reception by Ferdinand and Isabella after discovering the Americas).

I had a great day wandering and enjoying the spirit of la Diada de Sant Jordi all day Friday. There were readings of Don Quixote in cafes, spirited dances of the Sardana in plazas throughout the city, and general celebrations of love, reading, and all that makes Catalunya its own special nation with a pride and heritage of its own.

Cubism's Creator

Image from: http://www.redbubble.com/people/najeroux/journal/1448213-a-call-for-guerilla-public-art-nofrillsart-and-guernica

Image from: http://search.it.online.fr/covers/wp-content/pablo-picasso-las-meninas.jpg

{{Porque su mundo es diferente}}

Last Friday I didn't have film class, so I decided it was time to pay the Museu Picasso a visit. The Museu Picasso of Barcelona deals mostly with the artist's young life and his development as an artist that led him to become more or less the founder and most well-known artist of Cubism. Picasso lived in Barcelona for much of his youth, and was a part of the "artists' gang" of Els Quatre Gats, a bar that was frequented by Rusiñol, Casas, and other modernist artists, poets, and thinkers of the late 1800s and early 1900s. He later moved to Paris, where he further developed his style and started branching into a completely new way of seeing that would become cubism.

The Museu Picasso was really interesting and a great way to spend an afternoon. The way that Picasso completely changed his style of painting is absolutely astounding; it's almost impossible to believe that his early paintings and his Cubism paintings came from the same person! He had an amazing creative talent and eye, even turning later to sculpture and ceramic work to branch out on his artistic efforts.

Everyone thought that the young Picasso would grow up to be an excellent landscape painter, but nothing else. But as he started to spend more time with the gang at Els Quatre Gats, they encouraged him to focus more on the human form, and as he began to explore it, he began to play with it as well, to play with perspective and lighting, deconstructing the form into its geometric parts. While beforehand the great search of art had been to perfect the placement of lighting, to make the art look as real as possible, almost as if it could move (like Velázquez's "Las Meninas"), Picasso did away with lighting and perspective, painting a face both in profile and from the front at the same time, turning the curves of a human shape into their basic geometric parts, expressing his view of the modern world with different colors for different moods.

One really interesting part was a movie and then several gallery rooms dedicated to Picasso's reinterpretation of "Las Meninas". He counted Velázquez as one of his great artistic masters, and decided to do a reinterpretation of "Las Meninas" for the current time. The painting of the 17th century was from a world completely different from the world of the mid-50s when Picasso created the series. He painted a total of 58 different paintings expounding upon "Las Meninas", including studies of different characters within the painting, in different colors, with different forms, some in black and white, some more geometric, some less, some more realistic, some less. It's an absolutely astounding body of work and pays a great honor to one of Spain's masters of art.

The Museu Picasso was a great stop on my Barcelona museum list and left me very amazed at what a truly revolutionary and talented artist Picasso was.

Brussels: Land of Chocolate, Waffles, and EU officials

{{Me encantó viajar contigo}}

For Semana Santa I went with Guillem's family on a road trip through the southern French countryside to Brussels. Carla, Esperança, Claudio, and I drove to Brussels to meet Guillem, who had been there the five previous days for a model European Union conference with other young people from all around Europe. I loved passing by car through the south of France, which is absolutely beautiful. It was amazing to see how the scenery changed as we all compared what we saw out our window with different states; to go from northern California to the mountain passes of Montana to northern New England in the space of just a few days. But at the same time, it was undoubtedly French; the small towns we passed could have been Belle's hometown in "The Beauty of the Beast", like perfect postcard shots of the pastoral French countryside.

Brussels is a very international city, as many of the main offices for the European Union are located there. They boast that approximately 50% of the population is not Belgian by birth, being as so much of it is composed of EU officials and their families. As well, Brussels operates on two different languages: French and Flamenco. Flamenco, Guillem's family said, reminded them of misspelled and mispronounced German (they all lived for several years in Germany and speak German fluently). Native Flamenco-speakers are very proud of their language, and in some ways try and avoid speaking French as much as possible. French is what is taught always in the schools, even in the high levels (unlike here, where Spanish and Catalan are required equally).

It was Brussels' grand plaza that impressed me the most about the city; the rest all seemed rather dirty and just filled with faceless industrial or office-style buildings (nothing laid out as well as Barcelona, clearly!). The buildings that surrounded it were all stunning, every inch filled with sculptures and carvings and spires and gilding on some of the statues. We spent lots of time in the grand plaza! And we also ate lots of waffles while we were there; they are not simply some American invention, Belgian waffles. They were a little lighter and fluffier than waffles at home, always a dessert food, covered in chocolate or sugar or honey. The answer to crepes in Belgium I guess!

We also took several different day trips (we were gone a full six days): one day to Luxembourg and one day to Bruges and another small Belgian town close to Brussels. Luxembourg was absolutely gorgeous and perfectly picturesque. We were lucky because the duke was in the city when we were there, staying in his royal residence, so we even got to watch the guard outside the palace parade up and down for a while at exact hours. It was the perfect idea of an European town: charming, with cobblestone streets that wind throughout the city, beautiful countryside churches, white-washed houses with red roofs, everything.

Bruges was equally charming and an enjoyable stop on our road trip. It is a very popular tourist destination (I think for epitomizing that small European town feeling) and we were told that, since we went on a Saturday, we would find it absolutely overwhelmed by tourists, but it ended up not being the case; they were present, but it wasn't like walking down Las Ramblas on a Saturday mid-day either!

On our way back through France, we spent the night in Lyon, where Guillem lived for three weeks several summers ago to improve his French. It was fun having a guide who could lead us through the most important parts of the city on a quick evening tour. It was much bigger than I had expected it to be, and had a really unique opera house that Guillem said they really try and make part of the everyday culture of Lyon.

Throughout the trip I got to practice my French a little bit, and everyone always said they listened to try and detect the dreaded "American accent". But, fortunately, I passed the test and have managed to eliminate it, which they are quite proud of as a result of my 2.5 months with the French Institute! I also heard a lot of Catalan being as, when they spoke amongst themselves, they always spoke in Catalan. I now understand the vast majority of what I hear, and would even respond to general questions to the group that were in Catalan. It's really amazing how much you can improve on a language simply by listening to it all the time!