Sant Joan
The festival of Sant Joan (or San Juan) on June 24th marks the summer solstice and 6 months before (or after) Christmas. Barcelona, however, likes to celebrate the day before a holiday, which meant this past Monday night was the night to celebrate. We had heard fireworks going off in the courtyard behind Onix every day for the past 3 weeks. Little did we realize that this was all leading up to an entire night of fireworks, the scale of which I had never before seen in my life. There were bonfires in every neighborhood, fireworks on every street corner and people everywhere. I’m pretty sure every home in Barcelona emptied itself onto the streets and beaches of Barcelona Monday night.
A large group of us left Onix at midnight and just started walking towards the beach. With every block that we passed, the crowds got thicker and thicker. Once we hit the sand, there was hardly a place to sit down. Every piece of ground was either already occupied by people or resembled a battlefield strewn with used firework casings. I assumed everyone would have a few fireworks, shoot them off, hang with some friends, and then call it a night (similar to New Year’s in the states). Boy was I wrong. The kids shooting off fireworks started a little after sunset and didn’t stop or even slow down until around 3 or 4 in the morning. A group of us met some cool Catalans and we all hung out on the beach till the sun rose. The crowds had thinned some but there were still a significant amount of people on the beach. I was worried about something happening to my camera so I didn’t take it with me. Even if I had had it with me, there would be no way for pictures to really capture the scale of Sant Joan. Other people, however, have uploaded plenty of pictures to Flickr.
I suppose I have had my fun the past few days. It is time to take care of some homework while I have a chance. I want to make sure I have plenty of free time when my parents come to visit this weekend!
June 26th, 2008 at 12:04 am
hey michael-
I’m using your website for my ethics class assignment. we’re browsing websites with cookies turned off and reporting on what we find. We had to do two personal websites and so yours came to mind, but you possibly get more interesting results when you try to interact with the site, hence, I’m commenting to see if the browser complains any about cookies. That’s all. Take care.
-Heather
June 26th, 2008 at 5:27 am
Cool. Let me know what you discover!
June 26th, 2008 at 5:08 pm
heh. so turns out the comment posted. this didn’t show up for me after I made the comment last night.
June 26th, 2008 at 5:40 pm
Yeah…. for the first time a person makes a comment, I have to approve them. And you used a new email address so it thought you were a new person. Sorry!