Mon, 28 May 2012
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Expat Basil Howitt takes a look at summer folklore and traditional festivals in French Catalonia.Part One: Els Focs de la Sant Joan
In our part of the world, the riot of summer-long festivities was as ever set ablaze, literally, on the shortest night of the year with “Els Focs de la Sant Joan” (Les Feux de St Jean or The Fires of Saint John). These ceremonies are held in Perpignan (capital of French Catalonia) and in the villages of the Conflent and beyond. They are a folkloric symbol of joyous rebirth, and of the powerful emotional bonds between Catalans living north and south of the Spanish frontier.
A picturesque street in Perpignan
Following time-honoured tradition, on the night of 22nd June, an “eternal flame” was carried from its home in the Castillet in Perpignan to light a huge bonfire of faggots on the peak of Mount Canigou - the highest mountain in the region (2,784 metres) and sacred to all Catalans. 
During the Saturday of the previous weekend, in a ceremony known as La Trobada (The Meeting or Reunion), Catalans living on both sides of the border assembled with bundles of faggots on the Plateau des Cortalets, beneath Canigou, and camped there. In the early hours of Sunday 19th, the faggots were carried up the mountain and stacked there for burning on the night of 22nd.
This fire is a beacon that can be seen from villages all over the Conflent and beyond. In the early hours of 23rd, runners carry “the flame” down in relays to the surrounding villages and to Perpignan, so that it can be used to light their fires for the Focs de la Sant Joan.
At nightfall on 23rd, children dressed in white carry torches ignited by the flame through their own village and light a huge bonfire of souches (vine roots). Then the festivities begin. Sausages and maybe belly pork slices and other goodies are grilled on the embers of the fire, dancing begins (Sardanes, perhaps a disco) and huge quantities of rosé and rouge are consumed with the grilled food, often clapped between chunks of baguettes. Muscat is also passed around to be drunk “au puro” (poured into the mouth from a flask with a long slim nozzle). 
All this bounty is courtesy of the local Mairies.
This tradition lives on, though is not nowadays so widespread as formerly. And in many cases, local fires are lit not from the flame from Canigou but from boxes of matches in the villages.
Our neighbouring village of Rasiguères used to spare no efforts to make the Focs de la Sant Joan a memorable bacchanalian shindig in the 1980s and early 90s. Alas it happens no more, and the same applies elsewhere. As armies of elderly benevoles (volunteers) are gradually carried off to their last resting places under the cypress trees, younger men and women are not always so keen to replace them. Perhaps they are too busy trying to earn precarious livings to have time to collect the firewood, grill the sausages, cut the baguettes, hump around heavy flagons of wine, sweep up afterwards …
However in Perpignan, as always, they did the full works this year. The event on 23rd included the distribution of fougasse (special bread), singing led by the incomparable Catalan singer Jordi Barre – an 87-year-old legend in his own lifetime – four large bonfires, a laser show, dancing, and a spectacular display of fireworks.
Copyright AFP
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