A homage to Girona

I've re­alised I must fol­low my last col­umn prais­ing the Cata­lan cap­i­tal with a homage to what was my home for the past ten years, the won­der­ful Me­dieval city of Girona. The label “city” feels mis­lead­ing, how­ever, purely be­cause I've lived in cities my whole life and Girona felt any­thing but that. With a pop­u­la­tion of barely 100,000 and a tra­di­tional way of life which at times seemed un­touched by the out­side world, it was al­most a vil­lage to me.

What I hadn't an­tic­i­pated when we headed to my wife's place of birth in search of a peace­ful fam­ily life un­at­tain­able with a year-old baby in Barcelona was the old­fash­ioned­ness of the place, not only in terms of ap­pear­ance - with its old cob­bled streets wind­ing ma­jes­ti­cally up from the Old Town to the fa­mous cathe­dral with the world's widest Gothic nave - but also way of life. Girona has em­braced mod­ern life, of course, but it has also fer­vidly clung onto its con­nec­tion with na­ture and tra­di­tional ways of liv­ing. There were times over our ten-year stay that I was sur­prised not to turn a cor­ner and see a don­key being shep­herded down the Ram­bla or a bunch of chick­ens run­ning free across the plaça.

Around the city's thriv­ing tra­di­tional mar­ket in plaça Lleó peo­ple still pass the time of day and dis­cuss local af­fairs, en­quir­ing what has be­come of fam­ily, friends and ac­quain­tances from years gone by. Al­though this can be test­ing for your newly-ar­rived guiri who knows noth­ing of Avi Joan's mar­ket stall or Iaia Joana's cousins in Olot, it is tes­ta­ment to the preser­va­tion of a cul­ture that these ques­tions com­prise a good part of the daily con­ver­sa­tion.

One of the things I loved about Girona's old­fash­ioned­ness is the im­por­tance awarded to tra­di­tional nat­ural treat­ments, reme­dies and prac­tices, with lit­tle old her­boris­ter­ies co-ex­ist­ing along­side new al­ter­na­tive med­i­cine cen­tres. As most peo­ple now know due to the gas­tro­nomic fame the re­gion has achieved in re­cent years, this also ex­tends to blend­ing the tra­di­tional with the in­no­v­a­tive in prepar­ing and cook­ing food with lo­cally sourced and nat­ural in­gre­di­ents.

It's true that Gironins do not have a rep­u­ta­tion for out­go­ing or ex­tro­vert be­hav­iour, and it isn't al­ways easy to in­te­grate into a so­ci­ety so wary of out­siders given its con­flic­tive his­tory, but if you speak the lan­guage and show a will­ing­ness to learn about local cus­toms, you will be toured in style around this mag­nif­i­cent city by a peo­ple proud of their local his­tory and tra­di­tions. And you may not be of­fered a seat at El Celler de Can Roca, one of the world's best restau­rants and fully booked from now 'til God knows when, but you will be in­vited to sit down and enjoy some lo­cally pro­duced em­botits and for­mat­ges with pà amb toma­quet, chased down with a po­tent vi negre and, if you're lucky, a glass of ratafia - the local herb liqueur, in­tox­i­cat­ing in every sense. Don't pass it up if you get the chance.