People from Sant Salvador de Toló (small village in the High Pyrenees, Catalonia) celebrating their town's traditional "guixa" meal, as part of the Carnival holidays. Video posted by Associació La Campaneta.
We have talked before about how communal meals are a common element in Catalan traditional festivities. This is another case.
In many towns around Catalonia, during Carnival week they host "escudellades" (meeting to make and eat escudella soup). A variant of this is what you see in the video. In some villages of the Pallars area, such as Salvador de Toló and Isona, on Tuesday of Carnival week there is the tradition of all the town coming together to make a "guixa". The "guixa" is a local soup recipe (similar to escudella) that is made with broth, noodles, pork, chickpeas, pumpkin, rice, and beans.
The ingredients for the "guixa" are gathered on the previous Saturday, when a float parades through the town with all the children dressed up in their Carnival costumes, stopping in every house to ask for some ingredients. People in the houses contribute by donating some of the ingredients or some money that will be used to buy ingredients that are missing or other expenses caused by the party.
As with any celebration that happens as part of Carnival week, the point is to have fun, joke around, and be satirical about power. In the video, you can see some people dressed up as Guardia Civil (Spanish military police) and as members of Catholic religious orders, the people that during the rest of the year you're "not supposed" to make fun of. But, as we say in Catalan, per Carnaval tot s'hi val: for Carnival everything is allowed.
Information source: Pallars Jussà. The song is Los Manolos' cover of Jaume Sisa's Qualsevol nit pot sortir el sol.
