FESTIVAL FATIGUE

I’ve al­ways thought that au­tumn in Cat­alo­nia has a New Year feel to it. After a long sum­mer of loung­ing around and recharg­ing the bat­ter­ies, the re­turn to nor­mal life is tough but also comes with the en­ergy of a reset, with a cer­tain de­ter­mi­na­tion to get things back on track. Whether it’s going back to work or school, au­tumn is a time – even if re­luc­tantly – to put the sum­mer hol­i­days be­hind us and to roll up our sleeves and get down to busi­ness again.

How­ever, I have to admit that this au­tumn I feel ex­hausted. It’s not so much due to any ’post-va­ca­tion blues’, as the tran­si­tion from ham­mock to desk has been rel­a­tively pain­less, the prob­lem is that I’m suf­fer­ing from a case of what I have dubbed ’festa fa­tigue’.

That Cat­alo­nia has lots of fes­ti­vals and tra­di­tional cel­e­bra­tions through­out the year is right­fully lauded as proof of its vi­brant and healthy cul­ture. The coun­try’s fairs and fes­ti­vals are cul­tural as­sets that we should cel­e­brate and safe­guard as a so­ci­ety. It’s just that there are so many of them!

I never no­ticed it so much be­fore, when my chil­dren were still small the week­ends were al­ways ac­tion packed, with foot­ball matches and skat­ing com­pe­ti­tions, with birth­day par­ties and fam­ily out­ings, and so adding in a ’cer­cav­ila’ pro­ces­sion or a local book fair here and there was taken in one’s stride.

How­ever, now that they are grown-up, my week­ends are largely my own once more and after a busy week – and par­tic­u­larly at my age – a very wel­come chance to put my feet up. Ex­cept that come the week­end there are in­evitably ei­ther gegants or di­a­bles, a ver­mut or sopar pop­u­lar, a gim­cana or fira arte­sanal, castellers or a festa major, or one of a whole host of other cul­tural events that I want to sup­port, that I like at­tend­ing, that my neigh­bours say they look for­ward to see­ing me at, that my wife wants to go to, and that now being in­volved with the local gov­ern­ment I often have to make an ap­pear­ance at.

Just to give you an idea of the fre­netic ac­tiv­ity in my mu­nic­i­pal­ity each week­end since the sum­mer kicked off with the Sant Joan’s Eve revetlla at the end of June, we’ve had the Fes­ti­val de l’Es­port, a Sopar del Barri in each of the mu­nic­i­pal­ity’s neigh­bour­hoods, a Marató Fo­togràfica, the Festa d’Infància i Joven­tut, the Festa Major (and an­other festa major in our small vil­lage, which is part of but sep­a­rate from the main town and cel­e­brates its own local sum­mer fes­ti­val), the Festa de l’Aigua, the Bo­ti­far­rada Pop­u­lar, the Acte de la Diada, the Cor­rel­len­gua fes­ti­val, the Festa de la Verema, and this month we still have the Festa de la Gent Gran, the An­niver­sari del Grup Ex­cur­sion­ista and ’Castaween’, which brings to­gether the Cas­tanyada and Hal­loween (and so now we’re also im­port­ing cel­e­bra­tions as if we didn’t al­ready have enough).

There are a few more cel­e­bra­tions not in­cluded in the list above and while I haven’t at­tended all of them, I’ve cer­tainly done my fair share with the re­sult that I’m now suf­fer­ing from a se­ri­ous case of ’festa fa­tigue’ and, to be hon­est, get­ting to the point that if I have to see one more tres­tle table or one more tra­di­tional cos­tume…

Opin­ion