First of all, let’s return to the Catedral. Do you remember the choir singing? At first I thought: “That’s weird, I don’t recall any choir with white coats and santa hats or deer antlers… Usually they are more elegant…” I discarded this ‘cause I thought it was an artistic license to make THE MOMENT more romantic… But you know what? These people don’t do anything without a reason! Yesterday I was strolling around looking for an Starbucks to lay my butt and work in my laptop with a coffee (and a cake) and LOOK WHAT I FOUND!
YEAH! It’s them! It turns out they’re Medicine students from my old college! It was wild luck for me to be there to find them singing. This is the GPF weekend so, Kubo-sensei and Yamamoto-sensei where just here a year ago attending the Barcelona GPF. You can see in the photo that they are not in the same place as in the anime, they are a few meters to the right of the Catedral. There is a lot of people in the plaza in front of the Catedral because there is a special Christmas Market called Fira de Santa Llúcia (in the photo I was standing with my back to the market).
See? I love how they captured the lights and respected the name of the market. It is something very traditional and it is done weeks before Christmas in every town of Catalonia. There you can buy decorations, Christmas’ trees, and the cherished Caga Tió and Caganer ( Christmas pooping log and the Pooping guy, roughly translated, we catalans love poop… don’t ask, but we find it funny 😛 ).
Yeah, full of Tiós, those logs with faces and hats (barretina in fact, typical catalan, the real one has the strip black and not white as in the anime, I think the thought they were wearing santa’s hats). When you are a kid one day (first days of December) the Tió appears magically at your home. You have to feed him (he will eat whatever you offer him when you are not looking) and the day before Christmas (or the actual day, it depends on the family) you and the other family kids have to sing and beat him with a stick so he poops you presents… Said out loud it sounds ridiculous, but, I SWEAR that as a kid it feels magical XD.
Yeah I love it too Yuuri! ❤
And the last for this post! This street it’s called El Portal de l’Àngel, and connects the Catedral with Plaza Catalunya (the central square of Barcelona). You can see the Christmas lights are slightly different, and that’s because they try to change it every few years so it is not always the same. I actually like more the ones from last year :P.
For my wife and me, and many fans from Barcelona, it was new and nice to see our OTP walking the same streets we use to walk and enjoy the Christmas feeling as we do!
More to come in a Part 3 and maybe with some additions in the meantime! 😛
Nothing but My Aching Soul 