After 8 years and over 350 posts, it’s a pitty that my posts collect virtual dust at WordPress’s server. So this year I’ll be bringing back some of the best stuff, which doesn’t disagree with publishing new material. onsideredYou may have noticed it’s April. If you haven’t, you’d better go to your doctor because it’s…
‘Tis the season to be jolly, and there’s nothing jollier than knowing your vocabulary. Therefore, today we’re learning about two Catalan words that foreigners tend to get wrong. Now that the tió tradition has gone properly international thanks to Kate McKinnon (see video below), it’s time to debunk the belief that tió means uncle. ‘If…
During my last trip to Poland and bearing in mind my nationality, I’ve noticed the Catalan presence in Marie Curie’s country. There’s the old classic: people speaking Catalan in every city. We’re a few millions, but we travel a lot. Anyway, after running into a Catalan family in Reykjavik, a couple of Catalans in Polish…
When you celebrate Christmas in a different country go compare! That’s what happens when a Catalan spends his Christmas holiday in England. 24th Dec. In both England and Catalonia the birth of Jesus is celebrated at midnight in churches by fewer people every time. I guess that the most important thing is the expectation for…
I happened to post on Saint Valentine’s Day and Saint George’s Day by chance. And it seems we have another episode of the Anglo-Catalan culture. Catalan people have our version of Saint George’s legend by Jacobus de Voragine. We say that the dragon’s blood turned into a beautiful rose Saint George gave the princess. On…
This week begun with two pieces of news which ennoble the Catalan language. I’m not keen on journalism, but sometimes it makes me happy. Google says Catalan is one of the ten most active languages in the world (Directe.cat) Google highlights the presence of Catalan on the Internet in relation to its number of speakers.…
We spend our lives thinking that we betray our motherland with foreign celebrations, but maybe we were doing just fine. I’ve always been interested in things from outside Catalonia; mainly in cultures, ways of life, languages, traditions… Some years ago I told a friend of mine how I envied her intercultural relationship with an English…
Christmas is almost over. Yesterday it was a special gift day in Spain and today we’re supposed to enjoy our presents. But you know I don’t really fancy them. Even though, I have to fight four magic gift phenomena. These phenomena are: the Three Wise Men from the East, Father Christmas, Olentzero and Tió. The…
We will have the Catalan elections in six days and there’s a huge discussion about language, culture, immigration and independence on the street. Few days ago something related to all this happened to me; something that happens more often than I can stand ― which is not too much, to be true. Last week I…
Many cultures celebrate All Saints’ Day in many different ways. It was in year 609 or 610 that it was celebrated for the first time and in 835 they chose the 1st of November as the official date for it. According to the legend, on the 2nd of November, All Souls’ Day, the souls of…
