SANT JORDI V ST GEORGE

As you can see from Joe Hogan’s ex­cel­lent ar­ti­cle on the ori­gins of Saint George on pages 24 and 25, the re­li­gious fig­ure fa­mous for sav­ing princesses from drag­ons is revered all over the world. For me per­son­ally, two in­car­na­tions of Saint George have par­tic­u­lar sig­nif­i­cance, his sta­tus as the pa­tron saint of Eng­land – my birth­place – and of Cat­alo­nia – where I live.

While the broad out­lines of the fig­ure and his story are pre­sent in both cul­tures – the knight, the dragon, the princess, the cru­sader-like red cross – there are a num­ber of key dif­fer­ences in the ways that the two coun­tries cel­e­brate their na­tional pa­tron saint. So, my ques­tion here is: who is best, Jordi or George?

When I think of Saint George, one of the first things that springs to mind is the speech that Shake­speare puts in the mouth of the me­dieval war­rior king, Henry V. In the play of the same name, the king ral­lies his troops, urg­ing them to at­tack the French, cry­ing out to them: “Fol­low your spirit, and upon this charge / Cry ’God for Harry, Eng­land, and Saint George!’”

This tra­di­tional view of Saint George por­trays the drag­on­slayer as a mar­tial fig­ure and a sym­bol of na­tional pride. In fact, there has been a re­cent resur­gence of in­ter­est in the pa­tron saint’s feast day, with flags fea­tur­ing the red cross on a white back­ground pro­lif­er­at­ing on build­ings and ve­hi­cles, which per­haps ties in with the Brexit ref­er­en­dum and the de­ci­sion to leave the Eu­ro­pean Union. Mean­while, Saint George’s day has al­ways had an in­sti­tu­tional feel to it, with of­fi­cial church ser­vices in cathe­drals blast­ing out ren­di­tions of the pa­tri­otic an­them, Jerusalem, or pro­ces­sions by the UK scout move­ment.

In Cat­alo­nia, by con­trast, and per­haps iron­i­cally given the am­bi­tions of many for it to be­come an in­de­pen­dent state, Sant Jordi has not been turned into a na­tion­al­ist sym­bol. The Cata­lans cel­e­brate their pa­tron in a re­laxed and fes­tive man­ner, his feast day is char­ac­terised by gift-giv­ing, so­cial in­ter­ac­tion and ro­mance. You might crit­i­cise Sant Jordi’s Day for being too com­mer­cial, or even over-crowded, but it is un­likely to of­fend any­one for being overtly na­tion­al­ist or re­ac­tionary, de­spite the close link the Cata­lans have with their pa­tron.

There are plenty of rea­sons why I might pre­fer my na­tive land and its cul­ture over that of my adopted one, but there are rea­sons why I choose to live here rather than there. How each coun­try cel­e­brates April 23 is not one of them, but the spirit be­hind each of the feast days speaks vol­umes, and makes me think I am bet­ter off with the happy, laid-back Sant Jordi rather than the stern and jin­go­is­tic Saint George.