Professor in Critical Condition After Being Pelted with Candy

That would be a good headline, no?  The part about being pelted with candy is true, but I made it out with only minor bruises.  Yesterday was the Festa de Sant Medir in Gracia, and my friend Julie tipped me off about it a few days ago.  I’m always up for a new cultural experience, so I told her we were in. 

I knew something special was going on when I saw a lot—A LOT—of horses on Avinguda Tibidabo when I drove the kids to school.  But it was also grey and rainy—a cold, wet, Barcelona day.  When I got home around 6:30, it was dark, still cold and drizzling steadily.  On my walk from the train to the house, I pretty much decided we should stay home.  It was nasty out, and the parade did not start until 8 pm, which would mean the kids would get to bed late. 

But then I walked in the door, and Alec was all charged up and ready to go.  Unbeknownst to me, Alec had made plans for us to meet up with a colleague who lives in Gracia and go.   Of course, I had planned for us to connect with Julie, but we couldn’t reach Josep Marie, the colleague, so we ended up going with him.  Veterans of the parade, Josep Marie and his wife, Joanna—and their son and his friend—led us through the streets of Gracia to a spot close to where the parade would start. 

And what is the Festa de Sant Medir, you ask?  According to oh-Barcelona.com, the festival has been celebrated since 1830.  The story says that a baker from Gracia became sick and prayed to Sant Medir for a cure.  The baker vowed that if the saint cured him, he would make a pilgrimage to the saint’s shrine every March 3.  The baker recovered, and began his pilgrimage, banging on a drum and giving out sweets as he walked.  As the years went by, other people joined them, and they became the first “colla” which is the Catalan word for group or club.

It’s kind of a funny parade—people riding horses, some small bands, and “floats” which are really open-sided trucks.  There are now more than 30 colles that organize and participate in the parade—each band, float or group of horses and beribboned riders constitutes a colla.  The horse riders, the musicians, and the people on the trucks all throw caramelos—candy—out to the people lining the parade route.  100 tons of sweets are thrown during the parade.  Got that? 100 TONS of sweets.

The kids went absolutely crazy.  They simply could not believe that people were throwing candy to them.  And that it went on and on and on.  Mostly, it’s pretty junky candy—small wrapped hard candies.  But the kids don’t care.  They dive into the street, hold their bags up and shout “Aqui! Aqui!” to get the throwers to throw to them.  At one point Milo turned to me and asked, “Why don’t they do this in New York, mama?” We were clearly rookies, and had not brought anything in which to put the candy.  Fortunately, Joana equipped the kids with shopping bags, which weighed about 10 pounds each by the time we left.

Joana told us that it always rains on Sant Medir day; fortunately, the drizzle had stopped by the time the parade started.  But many people had come with umbrellas—some opened them up to protect themselves from the candy barrage, while others up-ended them in order to catch the candy.  One woman with a second floor apartment stood on her balcony, tied a rope around her upside down umbrella, and lowered it down in order to collect the sweets without ever having to leave the comfort of her own home.  After getting beaned in the head with several fistsful of hard candies, I understood her strategy.

The saint (Sant Medir) is supposed to be at the end of the parade—kind of like Santa Clause in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade.  The tradition is that the parade watchers throw candy at him.  Josep Marie told me that he normally travels the route in some kind of glass bubble.  But a couple of years ago, his bubble was shattered by the sweet projectiles, and this year he just didn’t show.