CROSSING CULTURES

Over the years liv­ing in Cat­alo­nia, no small amount of my time has been spent stand­ing in crowded streets watch­ing pro­ces­sions of elab­o­rately dressed peo­ple danc­ing, chuck­ing fire­works around or ca­vort­ing with props re­sem­bling fan­tas­ti­cal beasts.

I’ve had sweets thrown at me from dec­o­rated floats dur­ing Kings’ pro­ces­sions, I’ve been nearly clob­bered by tri­dent swing­ing dev­ils dur­ing Festes Major, and al­most tram­pled by Caps Grossos with im­paired vi­sion from their over­sized pa­pier mache heads.

Some­how I’ve man­aged to sur­vive it all, de­spite the odds being against me, as there is no short­age of these tra­di­tional out­door pop­u­lar cul­tural events in Cat­alo­nia. The Cata­lans cer­tainly love a good pro­ces­sion.

I saw proof of that last month when I was in Barcelona for the Chi­nese New Year cel­e­bra­tions held around Parc de l’Estació del Nord and Arc de Tri­omf. Stand­ing shoul­der to shoul­der with a host of other on­look­ers lin­ing the pave­ments, I watched a suc­ces­sion of groups dressed up in colour­ful cos­tumes strut­ting their tra­di­tional stuff.

Stand­ing there, it sud­denly struck me that Cata­lan and Chi­nese cul­ture are more alike than I would ever have imag­ined, not least in that they share a real en­thu­si­asm for these tra­di­tional out­door fes­tiv­i­ties that re­quire dress­ing up and danc­ing around the streets with drag­ons and fire­works.

Then there is tra­di­tional food, which fea­tures heav­ily in both Chi­nese and Cata­lan cul­ture. Whether it be a music fes­ti­val or a craft fair, I’m not sure I’ve ever been to an out­door cul­tural event in Cat­alo­nia that has not in­cluded stalls sell­ing a va­ri­ety of tra­di­tional del­i­ca­cies from em­botits to fideua. Dur­ing the Chi­nese New Year cel­e­bra­tions, too, there were stalls along Pas­seig Lluís Com­pa­nys sell­ing dif­fer­ent Asian food and drink that were doing a roar­ing trade.

And there are yet more sim­i­lar­i­ties be­tween the two cul­tures. Barcelona’s Chi­nese com­mu­nity num­bers over 20,000 peo­ple and it is built around an ex­ten­sive net­work of small pri­vate busi­nesses. Cat­alo­nia too is a coun­try of small busi­nesses and, like the Chi­nese, the Cata­lans have a rep­u­ta­tion for pos­sess­ing a canny en­tre­pre­neur­ial spirit.

Which brings us to mar­tial arts. Over the cen­turies, China has de­vel­oped an array of hand-to-hand com­bat sys­tems, most fa­mously kung fu. These fight­ing tech­niques are often based on peas­ant cul­ture and even the weapons have their ori­gin in agri­cul­tural im­ple­ments.

I guess this is where Chi­nese and Cata­lan cul­ture di­verge, al­though with the likes of the falç (sickle), the es­par­denya (tra­di­tional san­dals) and the bar­retina (tra­di­tional hat), Cat­alo­nia also has a strong peas­ant tra­di­tion. Wouldn’t you just love to see what Cata­lan mar­tial arts might look like? The mind bog­gles!

opin­ion