LET THERE BE LIGHT

The last weekend in September sees the Merce Festival take over Barcelona. 

Nominally a religious holiday, it is really the goodbye to summer. One last blast before the autumn wardrobe is unpacked.

Falcons

Across the city there are parades, concert, fireworks, concerts and all manner of events, local teams of “Falcons” (human Pyramids) and Devils  (firework wielding dervishes) pop up all over the place and giants and fire dragons parade the streets.

Giant Tetris 

Merce is really too big to fully get your head around, it is best just to go for a wander and see what you find.

One event this year was drawing large crowds, a light show at the Sagrada Famila by Canadian company Moment Factory.

The Sagrada Famila is a storage enough spectacle as it is, and the addition, lights planted about the building, projections and even a crane scattering glitter, give the building an utterly surreal quality. Like a Grimm fairytale the lights bring the seem to complete Gaudi’s weird vision with the ornate stonework coming to life, growing and crawling,

Cybermen dancing in Parc Ciutadella

Zydeco band, with samba drum troupe and fire Devils in Placa Catalunya

IT'S A CORKER

The little city of Girona, about an hour’s drive north of Barcelona is a perfectly pleasant place, with a quaint old town, a church or two, with some eccentric little shops, (one proudly displaying Marmite for sale) a reasonably grand placa with a few decent restaurants and a goodly variety of bohemian tourist tat. 

It is also home to a quite a few nouveau-hippy types: squeaky clean dreadlocks, supercilious attitude and lots of expensive gadgets called “I”-something. 

Girona is for most of year worth seeing but not worth going to see (to paraphrase Samuel Johnson).  

However around the third week of May every year, the world, or at least a decent chuck of it, beats a path to Girona for the annual Temps de Flors (Time of Flowers) festival. 

 It is not quite as extravagant or as all-embracing as the other local festivals. Rather than blanketing the place in blooms and throwing grand petal laden parades the Temps de Flors is focused around a promenade of eclectic displays some prominent in the middle of public spaces, others tucked away in theatre lobbies, stairwells, shops, courtyards, workshops and churches. 

They range from the childish (because they are made by children), through obscure and the remarkable to the outright absurd. 

 

All in all, very Catalan.