Although Barcelona’s Sant Jordi Celebration is not too familiar for tourists, this is one of the most popular days for the Catalans. The entire city appears full of outdoors shops where you can buy both roses and books, and hundreds of popular writers take a place in the streets to sign their readers’ books. In Sant Jordi you will smell and get to know the real Catalonia.
Want to know more about Sant Jordi?
St. Jordi is Catalunya’s version of Valentine’s Day. According to the legend, there was a terrifying dragon located in the village of Montblanc, south-west of Barcelona. The dragon was always hungry, so the people in the village gave him one animal a day to keep it from attacking the village. However, one day the dragon ate the last of the animals, and then it started eating the people of the village too. In order to satisfy the hunger of the dragon, the people of the village decided to randomly chose a person every day to be sacrificed to the beast.
One day the princess’ name came up, and although that made the King very sad, he sent her to the dragon. But just when the dragon was about to eat the princess, a brave and handsome knight, known as Sant Jordi, rode into town and killed the beast with his spear, saving her life. From the blood of the dragon, there grew a rose bush, and Sant Jordi took a red rose and gave it to the princess as a sign of his love.
Who gives what on Sant Jordi´s day in Barcelona? On Sant Jordi’s day the men in Catalunya give their sweetheart a red rose, and in recent years a new Sant Jordi tradition is that the ladies give the men a book. There are bookstalls and book markets all over Barcelona on Sant Jordi’s day especially on Las Ramblas and Rambla de Catalunya.
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