Festa of the Week

One of the great things about living in Catalonia is that there's never any problem with what to do for a weekend. There's always a festa going on somewhere, usually somewhere pretty close. There's a whole site devoted to them, festes.org, which has just celebrated its tenth birthday with the sort of media coverage that would give most bloggers a nightmare, but it's only in Catalan. So, the blog that's more cabra than cabró brings you an irregular "Festa of the Week" feature in something approaching English…

This week we have to leave Capellades and go about eight kilometres in either direction to find the Festa de Sant Crist in Piera or Igualada. We don't like Igualada, so we'll opt for Piera!

''Festa de Sant Crist" translates very roughly as "Holy Christ Party", and is an excuse to keep on celebrating a little bit longer after Easter. You can find the program for Piera here: this year they got the President to open the festivities, followed by free vermouth and music. Frankly, you need alcohol after forcing yourself to stay awake through a speech by Montilla… Throughout the two days of the main festivities there are concerts, dance, theatrical production, a PlayStation tournament and the opportunity to give blood, all washed down with vermouth, the traditional drink of any Catalan festa. There are also about 270 market stalls where you can buy things ranging from fake handbags to goat's milk cheese to a new car. In the good old days, the banks used to arrange mortgages from their little market stalls, but I doubt they'll be much of that this year.

The Sant Crist that we are supposed to be celebrating is a wooden figure of Jesus on the cross, which has been venerated in Piera since the thirteenth century (or since the 1950s, the original having been destroyed during the Civil War, depending on who you believe): you can some arty-type photos here. In any case, the festa has probably always been more commercial than religious: in the days before the internal combustion engine, the shops came to you, not the other way round. On the other hand, they only came a few times a year… These days, I can buy my goat's milk cheese from the supermarket downstairs for a fraction of the price I would be charged at the festa, but I'll still go along to get my free vermouth!

Next week: St. George's Day