217 / 344
Dia de Sant Joan
St John’s Day (June 24)
is the quietest
saint’s day of the year in the city – largely
because everyone has been up all of the
previous night for the famed
Nit del
Foc
(Night of Fire), which involves
massive bonfires and fireworks across the
city. It marks a hedonistic welcome to
summer, with
cava
(champagne) parties in
full swing in every neighbourhood and
pyrotechnics on Montjuïc and Tibidabo.
The traditional place to end the night is
on the beach, watching the sun come up,
thankful that the dawning day is a public
holiday.
Celebrating
Catalan-style
Central to any Catalan festival is the
parade of
gegants
, the overblown
five-metre-high giants with a costumed
frame (to allow them to be carried) and
papier-mâché or fibreglass heads. Bar-
celona has its own official city
gegants
of King Jaume and his queen, while each
neighbourhood cherishes its own tradi-
tional figures, from elegant noblewomen
to turban-clad sultans – the Barri Gòtic’s
church of Santa Maria del Pi has some of
the most renowned. Come festival time
they congregate in the city’s squares,
dancing cumbersomely to the sound of
flutes and drums, and accompanied by
smaller, more nimble figures known as
capgrossos
(bigheads) and by outsized
lions and dragons. Also typically Cata-
lan is the
correfoc
(fire-running), where
brigades of drummers, fire-breathing
dragons and demons with firework-flar-
ing tridents cavort in the streets. It’s as
devilishly dangerous as it sounds, with
intrepid onlookers attempting to stop the
dragons passing, as firecrackers explode
all around – approach with caution.
Fire-runners take to the streets
Barcelona lit up by fireworks