Holidays in Tarragona

Holidays in Tarragona

Tarragona is a very festive community. Throughout the year, every five or six weeks we celebrate one festival or another.

Right after New Year’s, the 6th of January (Christmas Fortnight) we celebrate the coming of the Three Wise Men, and that is when children get their gifts. There is a very feisty cavalcade with thousands of people in the streets, The Three Wise men (“The Three Kings”) give away candy and they are received in the City Hall by the mayor.

A few weeks later we have the carnivals (“Mardí grass”, which lasts from Thursday to next Tuesday) with several parades and parties.

Next is the Holy Week, about Easter. Initially, is a religious festivity with processions of polychromed images reproducing the Passion of Christ, carried on the shoulders of de devotees and accompanied by members of the congregations dressed in tunics with peaked masks of penitents, carrying torches (main day Holy Friday). The Easter weekend lasts until the Monday after, when people celebrate eating outdoor grilled meat, and godfathers are supposed to present their godchildren with a special cake with chocolate eggs and chocolate figurines.

The 23rd of April is Saint George’s Day, the patron saint of Catalonia. Is the “festa” of the books and roses. People give each other a book and a rose (usually him to her…although that’s getting a bit politically incorrect and feminists reject it or do it both ways). There set up bookstands in the main walkways, and popular best-seller authors present their newest works. Local ones sign the books for customers.

By mid-May we have the Tarraco Viva festival, a two-week succession of shows, conferences, and other exhibitions recreating the Roman times, reenacting gladiator fights, military exercises by dressed-up Roman soldiers and centurions, and food stands serving “Roman” food.

The 24th of June is Saint John’s Day (Night ). Actually is a very ancient celebration of the summer solstice popular around the Mediterranean from before Christianism. There are bonfires and fireworks and rowdy parties on the beaches at night.

All through July and August there are “verbenas”, in Catalan “revetlles”, very popular night parties of music and dancing in different locations of the city and surrounding neighbourhoods.

The 19th of August is the so-called, “Little Big Feast”, supposedly Saint Magi’s Day (but I think rather that remembers the anniversary of the death of Caesar Augustus, just another piece of religious syncretism, and has been going on for some 2000 years). There are parades and exhibitions of a whole bunch of totemic animals (dragons, crowned eagles, monsters, and other beasts) as well as the human castles (“castells”), towers of up to nine people one on top of the other, every level manned by lighter individuals until the top, usually 5-year-olds brave enough to climb all the way up. There are “castells” all through the summer season all over Catalonia, with a biennial “world series” held every second October in Tarragona.

The 11 of September is Catalonia National Holiday, a political festivity. There are ceremonies dedicated to former leaders of the independent Catalonia, laying of flower wreaths at the monuments and, in the past ten years or so, the occasion for huge rallies with more than two million people in the streets, usually in Barcelona, claiming for the independence of our country from the Kingdom of Spain.

The week that ends on the 23rd of September is Festa Major of Saint Tecla, the big celebration of the city. There are parades, processions, art exhibitions, “castells”, concerts of rock or pop music, and other popular events, some of the old traditions only understood by locals (“Dames i Vells”, that is Ladies and Old Men, a sort of theatrical show called “ball parlat”, a dance without dancing, only words, criticising everyone and everything in the city in a very rude, coarse, mocking and obscene way), and quite a bit of drinking. Again another example of cultural syncretism, as the 23 of September is the anniversary of the birth of Caesar Augustus.

All Souls is also an ancient celebration, the 1st of November, dedicated to the dead (The Dead’s Day actually is the 2nd of November). Nowadays a bit adulterated by the influence of North American Halloween, used to be more of a family reunion celebrated by eating some very tasty pastries called “panellets” (little breads), and dry nuts, mainly hazelnuts and roasted chestnuts. Some people will go out to parks and woods for the celebration called “castanyada” (“castanya” is Catalan for chestnuts).

And then Christmas.

All throughout the year the citizens of Tarragona will use every opportunity to have a typical good meal that implies some sort of festivity or celebration. In winter are the “calçotades” and in spring and summer the “paellas”. Particularly over the weekend, as people have to work, there is always a good reason to enjoy a meal and friends or family around a table.