The heating is on, but my dedovskis are frozen as I write.
We are therefore in 2021, the year after the one that has not ended. Or that it didn’t exist, we didn’t live, a wasted year – as I hear a lot of people say. I’m still living those first days of shift, writing 2020 automatically, my frozen dedovskis are still addicted to the symmetrical combination of twozerodoiszero numbers.
In Catalonia and Spain, the holiday season ended just two days ago. Día de Reyes, January 6, is the real local Christmas, where everyone exchanges gifts. It is the closing epilogue after the night of December 24, when the children descend from the club into the caga-tío or “uncle of Nadal”, a red-hat trunk fed with cookies and water since the beginning of December, for that he shits candies and “sleeves”.
Caga tío revisited (Reproduction / Casa da Sogra)
It is in these few occasions of family reunions in times of greed, even in small groups, that we hear family stories. Love.
Like my mother-in-law, a doctor, who, among turrones and wines, told us how in her youth she hid the Vietnamese at home (as the booklet printers were called) and the revolutionary posters of one of her friends, a Communist, pursued by the Francoist police.
But back to the subject of shit.
When I first arrived here many years ago, Catalan festive eschatology was one of the first cultural details, hmmm, that caught my attention.
In that distant year of 2012, Spain was still breathing hard because of the financial crisis (and yet it was perhaps living a relatively happy life not knowing that in the sci-fi era of 2020 there would be a season as 12 Monkeys by Terry Gilliam -ay, life).
At Christmas that year, I put ozone on the first caganers of my life.
It was at the famous Santa Lucía Christmas market, opposite Barcelona Cathedral. I spotted lots of little stools with sticks, all lined up like an army, each one shitting a compact, showy brown shit. They were politicians, artists, historical figures. There was even a Prince that I almost bought, that I love Prince even shit.
Detail: tradition hides the caganer in the Christmas crib. The character is a symbol of fertility and luck. These Spaniards are crazy, gusta moi !!
In the twenty-year year that recently ended, some of the most popular caganers were those of King Emeritus Juan Carlos I, who was struggling in a thousand troubles and scandals, and sanitarist Fernando Simón, displays and carries -official speech of the coronacrise española. . With masks.
Frida Kahlo does what we all do. Sadly I didn’t find Bolsillonaro (Read: caganer.com)
But the party was over, the Christmas lights were going out and, behold, blackjack begins in Spain with more and more restrictions, a reflection of the ugly increase in Covul cases.
Since January 7, we have gone from containment by region to municipal containment. You can only leave with a very good justification. Ditto for entering and leaving Catalonia. Bars and restaurants only stay open until 3:30 p.m. and with many limitations. And we will continue at least until February with a curfew between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m.
Vero, started vaccinating people on December 27. There was an initial logistical problem with the Pfizer vaccine, which had to be transported at -80 ° C, but now it will be. The first are the groups at risk and the health professionals.
Yes, the party is over and, in addition, a cold arrives that will break records. Some of the colder places in Spain are already heading towards the minus 40 degree mark. The red alert is everywhere.
If the forecast is correct, in three days we will accumulate more snow in Spain than in the countries of northern Europe. Snow is expected in Barcelona, Madrid and elsewhere. It is the meeting of Mediterranean pasta Filomena, named after my grandmother, with cold pasta from the continent. Hence my frozen fingers.
About the caganers: I found Frida Kahlo, Angela Merkel, Chewbacca, Trump, Queen Elizabeth II and Joe Biden doing some good shit. But not Bolsonaro, unfortunately. Neither did Neymar, who had been a star caganer in 2013, the year he joined Barca. I will write to the makers of caganer, it is not possible. Happy two thousandth.