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Hello ! My supporting friends ,🖤💚💔🤍🍉

Thank you from my heart for what you are doing for the people of Gaza who are in bad need in this tough and dire time. 💔💚🖤🤍

You are examples for kindness, generosity and nobility. You have been standing with for long and showing how brave one should be in time of need. 🍉🍉🍉🍉

You helped me greatly to make progress in my campaign, but I am still in need of your kind support to reach my goal.✌️✌️

As noticed, the campaign is very slow😪😪 now and needs strong move and this can be carried out through your contribution and cooperation. 😯😯

Please don't leave us alone during this dire time. I am still in the first quarter of my campaign. ❣️❣️

https://gofund.me/0dc0aa34

This is a verified campaign (number 214 on el-shab-hussein and nabulsi's spreadsheet)

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A street in Lladó d'Empordà town in Comarques Gironines, Catalonia.

Photo by jmbrugues on Instagram.

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Festes de la Mercè!!

For a wonderful look at the soul of Catalan traditions, take a look at our capital's most important festival: Les festes de la Mercè (Barcelona, 2022).

Quin goig!! Quin goig, per favor! ^-^

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The Council of Europe has published a report about Spain's violations against the language rights of Catalan and Aranese people. It explains how Spain does not follow the European charters that aim to respect minority and minoritized languages, despite having ratified them, and also shows how Spain's mistreatment of the Catalan linguistic community has only gotten worse in the last 15 years.

And we appreciate this greatly, but there are experts proving Spain's human rights violations against Catalan people all the time, and yet nothing happens and the Spanish Government continues passing more discriminatory laws and the Spanish tribunals keep applying them in the worst ways possible. Is the Council of Europe ready to do something to make Spain respect the peoples whose land it occupies?

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Today (September 24th), the city of Barcelona celebrates its festa major (Catalan holiday for the local patron saint), dedicated to the Virgin of Mercy (Mare de Déu de la Mercè, in Catalan).

Usually, on this holiday of La Mercè, or at least on the days around it, it rains. The legend says that it's not rain, but the tears of Saint Eulàlia —old patron saint of Barcelona—, who cries because the city forgot her.

In this post I'll explain who was Eulàlia (according to the legend) and what happened that made her lose the position as the city's main patron saint.

1. Saint Eulàlia of Barcelona, martyr

Saint Eulàlia is believed to have lived in the 4th century AD, when the Roman emperor Diocletian was persecuting Christians. Eulàlia lived in Sarrià (village near Barcelona, nowadays a neighbourhood of Barcelona). She was only 13 years old, but she knew she was a good speaker so she went to see Dacian —the Roman governor in Barcino (modern-day Barcelona)— to try to convince him to stop the persecution of Christians in his territory.

The Roman governor accused her of going against the emperor's orders and sentenced her to suffer as many tortures as her age: they beat her on the streets, teared her skin off with hooks, marked her body with burning irons, forced her to stand on her feet on top of a burning grill, cut off her breasts, scratched the inside of her tights with rocks, threw boiling oil in her injuries, poured melted lead on her, locked her naked in a prison cell full of fleas, and tried to burn her; but during her whole tortures she had been praying, and by the time they tried to burn her, the flames moved away from her and attacked her torturers instead.

The most famous one out of the tortures was when she was put inside a barrel full of broken glass, knives and nails, and she was thrown down a hill 13 times to roll on them.

In the end, she was crucified naked on a cross shaped like an X to make her die in an dishonourable way. Then, a miracle happened. Some say that her hair grew quickly to cover her breasts and sex; others say that a snow storm suddenly appeared and covered her in snow. The thirteenth torture killed her, but the passerbies saw how her soul turned into a white dove that came out of her mouth and ascended into heaven.

Two scenes from a Medieval altarpiece that explained Saint Eulàlia's story, by Bernat Martorell. Nowadays it's in Museu Episcopal de Vic (Vic, Catalonia).

She became a local hero, was canonized as a saint and declared patron saint of Barcelona.

Centuries later, during the Islamic invasion in the Middle Ages, her body was unburied and hidden to make sure the Muslim armies wouldn't profane it. From then on, the location of her body was lost until the year 877, when Bishop Frodoí found her hidden tomb under the church Santa Maria de les Arenes (nowadays Santa Maria del Mar). Her remains were moved to the Cathedral of Barcelona, where they remained until the Cathedral was sacked during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939).

Saint Eulàlia's tomb in the crypt of Barcelona's Cathedral.

2. Our Lady of Mercy

Our Lady of Mercy is one of the aspects of under which the Virgin Mary is worshipped. She became popular in Catalonia in the 13th century, after a night of August 1218, when she appeared in the dreams of the king James I and two religious men who would later be canonized as saints (Pere Nolasc and Ramon de Penyafort), ordering them to start a new Order destined to rescuing Christian prisoners who had been kidnapped by Saracens.

In the year 1687, a terrible locust plague attacked the city of Barcelona, as well as much of Catalonia. The desperate population of Barcelona asked the Virgin of Mercy for help. The City Council promised that they would nominate the Virgin of Mercy as the city's patron saint if She freed it from the locusts. Soon, the locust plague ended, and the City Council kept their promise, though the change didn't receive official permission from the Pope until 200 years later, in 1868.

3. Protest and change

Barcelona's population didn't forget that for so many centuries there was great devotion for Saint Eulàlia. A group of citizens showed up to the Church of Mercy and threw stones at the city's authorities, asking for Saint Eulàlia to be the patron again. After this event, the City Council decided that Eulàlia should be co-patron.

4. The holiday

Since then, and particularly since the 1900s, the day of the Virgin of Mercy became the most popular festa major (Catalan holiday celebrated with big parties and folk culture on the day of the local patron saint) for the whole city together. Though each neighbourhood (nowadays they're neighbourhoods of Barcelona, but most of them used to be towns that became attached to the city with the industrial expansion) keep their own festa major and Saint Eulàlia is also still celebrated in February, La Mercè is the biggest festa major in Barcelona.

Source: Carla Galisteo for Sàpiens.

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Autumn in the town of Durro (High Pyrenees, Catalonia).

Photo from Vall de Boí.

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hola! només una cosa: festa major a Tarragona és el 23 de setembre per Santa Tecla. El pilar caminant però és fa per la diada de la Mercè el 24

Gràcies! Ho acabo de canviar per posar que és el dia després.

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The Eagle of Tarragona dancing during the city’s festa major (local festivities) of Santa Tecla.

Majestic animals such as eagles and dragons are present in traditional Catalan festivities, especially in Catalunya Nova (Southern and Western half of Catalonia). Same way as the giants, these figures are hollow so people can get under them and make them dance.

Tarragona’s Eagle is documented since at least the year 1531, when it’s written that she participated in the Santa Tecla and Corpus festivities, just like nowadays.

Video by nani_nolla on instagram.

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Did you know that Barcelona (Catalonia) has one of the oldest underground/subway system in the world?

The oldest one is London's (UK), which was started in the year 1863. Barcelona's metro started in 1863 too, but at that point this rapid transit railway was not underground. The first completely underground line was inaugurated in 1924, and that first line mentioned before was turned into an underground line in 1929.

Nowadays, Barcelona's metro tunnels run for 125.4 km (more than 411.417 ft) with 165 stations. This number is not including the cable railway and cable car, which are integrated in the metro system.

In the video above, you can see the evolution of Barcelona's metro and the expected changes in the near future.

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How they make espardenyes, the traditional Catalan peasant shoes. They have been the main shoes worn by peasants and the working class since the Middle Ages until well into the 20th century.

These videos were posted by the artisan shop Terra d'espardenyes, 4th generation of shoemakers from Valls (Catalonia) who have been making them since 1939. Link to their online shop, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter.

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Hello dear.. Please don't skip my message My name is Mohammed, from the afflicted and destroyed Gaza Strip, where life has become impossible and tragic, and where we see death and pain every moment and every day. Our children suffer from hunger, pain, deprivation and lack of medicine. The war deprived them of playing, school, and their most basic rights. They are now suffering from woes and tragedies. 😭😭 During the war, my wife gave birth to a child and I could not find any milk for him Our conditions are tragic, and we live in a shelter that lacks the minimum requirements for life and is plagued by diseases and epidemics Please help me save my children from the hell of the Gaza Strip and provide them with a decent life 😔 Your assistance, no matter how simple, is enough to ease the burden on us and help us overcome our crisis. Please sympathize with me and donate to me or contribute to sharing the campaign and spreading it widely

Vetted by 90-ghost

So far they have been able to raise very little money. Help them with a donation if you can, and if you can't donate, visit his blog and help him by reblogging or making a post about his case.

Link to the vetting by 90-ghost.

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An ivy-covered building in the town of Rupià, in Comarques Gironines, Catalonia.

Photo by Eulalia Coll on Flickr.

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Happy 2 years of Bussi!

And a moment of silence for those two young workers who had to perform this dance.

B...Bussi? 😳

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https://www.tumblr.com/useless-catalanfacts/715593986542370816/i-assume-you-heard-of-what-the-real-madrid-twitter

If you don’t mind me asking, where did you get your information? I’m hoping to do some research into how Barça was impacted by the Franco regime and was hoping you wouldn’t mind sharing your sources.

All of it comes from sources in Catalan and Spanish, mostly the edition of Sàpiens (history magazine) that was dedicated to it. All the quotes I posted in English in the post, I translated myself. Maybe you can find information in English in the Barça Museum, idk if they have their information online but the museum itself is very informative.

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I've given a try to Tumblr Communities and so MINORITIZED CULTURES has been born!

If you wanna show the world your culture, learn about different minoritized cultures - or cultures that are very much ignored by Western media -, reconnect with one, discover languages and history, and/or share struggles and joys, this is the place!

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This might be the wrong place to ask this, but what’s the deal with RCD Espanyol? FC Barcelona is viewed as the club that’s for Catalan independence, while Espanyol is seen as against Catalan independence. My question is whether or not that’s true, and if it is, why is that?

Espanyol literally means "the Spanish" and its fans are "Spanishists" (same as the political term), so there you have it. To make an example that more people will be familiar with, if you made a club in Northern Ireland and named it "the English", this "Belfast's English" wouldn't exactly gather a fanbase of people in favour of Irish unification. Espanyol is not only seen as against independence, it goes further than that, it's seen as the Spanish nationalist.

And even more, Barça already existed (and was extremely popular) when Espanyol was created in the same city because they considered that there were too many foreigners in Barça and they wanted to make a club only for Spanish people and those they saw as Spanish (Catalans included), that's why they called it "the Spanish", because it was only for Spaniards. So what kind of people, when given both clubs as options, would choose not to be a Barça fan but to follow "the Spanish" instead?

That's not to say you can't find fans of all kinds in every club. Nowadays there's people who simply "inherit" being fans of a club from their parents. But people who consider themselves Catalan —not Spanish— aren't likely to follow a club whose very name is calling themselves Spanish and calling the city Spanish.

For all these reasons, Espanyol was promoted by the fascist dictatorship of Franco as the ideal club that Catalans should follow (instead of Barça, which was a victim of the dictatorship's repression, as we have explained before). So Barça was seen (because it was) as the antifascist & Catalan resistance club, and Espanyol as the status quo fascist dictatorship regime-approved Spanish-and-not-Catalan club.

I hope this helps!

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Medieval Catalan coins

Year 1300-1311. Silver, issued in Mallorca by the King James II of Mallorca.

1282-1285. Silver, King Peter II and Constance of Sicily.

1311-1324. Gold, King Sanç of Mallorca.

1346. Gold, Perpinyà, King Peter III.

1213-1276. Silver, King James I (with inscription in Arabic).

1285. Silver, Barcelona, Peter the Great.

1336-1355. Silver, Peter III.

1442-1458. Gold, Alfons IV.

1464-1466. Gold, Peter IV.

1396-1410. Silver, València, Martin I.

Source: MNAC