Livin' La Vida...Merce

Cultural Activity

I was lucky enough to be in Barcelona during the biggest celebration of the year: La Merce. Merce is the patron saint of Barcelona and so she is celebrated by the entire city. Years ago, it was more of a Catholic festival than a cultural festival. However today it is celebrated by anyone who feels passionate about Barcelona and it’s rich culture and history. The first festivities were concerts on Wednesday night. There were a whole bunch of bands playing at various stages. It was similar to Summerfest in Wisconsin (the largest music festival in the country). I hopped on the metro with some of the people from IES not exactly knowing what I was getting in to. What should have been a short 15 minute metra ride ended up being about 45 minutes of craziness. The metra was packed. I mean packed like sardines. The Metra was an indicator of the huge amount of people that were there too. It was so crowded! The band I saw was a techno-rock band that was like nothing I have heard back in the States. I really enjoyed the whole concert scene because it reminded me of the county fair back home.

The next day was the main festival in the city. My roommate and I found a place to stand on La Rambla to see the parade. The parade was not at all like the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade one bit. First of all it was a much smaller scale and not as organized. There were small kids playing instruments and random people walking in the parade. But the main difference was the gigantes. The were at least 30 of these giants that were all part of the parade. They “danced” and were usually in pairs. Some were people with bird heads while others were just giant people. Some were normal sized people with huge heads. It was very animated and silly to me. I know they hold a cultural significance but I am not sure what.

We followed the parade back to the main placa where we saw castellers! It was so cool! These are huge human pyramids that have a base of a whole crowd of people and are topped off by a small child. There have been children that have fallen to their deaths making the top part of the castellers so today they were wearing helmets. All the random people were helping out to make the castelle even stronger. It was incredible to see such a unity among strangers just to make a human pyramid. It was interesting because I know it is sort of a competition amongst other groups to see who can make the best one. I wonder how much they practice or if they have tryouts for it. I thought it was incredible to be a part of the most important cultural event of my new city, Barcelona. I am very lucky I got to see it.