#llegendes

This comic/cartoon is based on Catalan legends and it has THE CUTEST companion! Look at him, it's a Tió/Soca de Nadal (the Catalan Christmas tradition of a log that poops presents for kids)!

Check out his little purse-thing: it's a toilet paper roll! 😭 I haven't watched it yet and I love him already.

One of the recurring characters in fairytales is "Prince Charming": a handsome and well-mannered young prince who rescues the damsel in distress.

In languages like English and French, he is named after the characteristic of being "charming". But in some Romance languages, he's named "the Blue Prince".

Catalan: Príncep Blau

Italian: Principe Azzurro

Spanish: Príncipe Azul

Older texts in French also said: Prince Azur and Prince Bleu

It's easy to tell why he is charming, but why is he blue?

The earliest known documented uses of the term date from the 1850s, but the origin or reason for it isn't clear.

🤴Theory 1: based on a real-life prince

On the Internet, you'll see many people repeat the theory presented by Bernard Delmay, who defended that the expression comes from the House of Savoy, the ruling monarchy in Italy in the second half of the 19th century, since the Italian Unification in 1861. Blue was the colour of this dynasty, plus the prince and future king Victor Emmanuel II wore the blue officer's uniform on the first time that he visited his future parents-in-law. He also had blue eyes. His ancestor Amadeus VI (1334-1383) had been known as the Green Count because of the clothes he wore when celebrating a tournament, and Amadeus VII (1360-1391) as the Red Count either because of the colour of his hair or because he ditched the black clothes he wore to mourn his father for a bright red outfit when he found out his first son had been born. Thus, the same reasoning could go for Victor Emmanuel II (1820-1878) becoming the "Blue Prince", right?

Well, no. According to the Italian Language Academy (Accademia della Crusca), this theory has been disproved. The earliest mentions of "Blue Prince" in any language that still uses that term are written after Victor Emmanuel II's wedding, so that doesn't contradict the theory. However, the earliest known reference to Victor Emmanuel II as "Blue Prince" only dates back to the 1950s, so making the assertion that it must have come from him could be a stretch. And speaking of the earliest mentions: the first attested use in Italian is in a book published in 1898, but one year before that the expression "Blue Prince" was already printed in a book in Spanish published in Mexico.

But when we search all the uses of this term, linguists cited by the Italian Language Academy found that the earliest mentions are in French. Even though French uses the term "Prince Charmant" nowadays (and English took it from French), French texts from the mid-1800s call him Prince Blue or Prince Azur ("Blue Prince"). These uses are documented before Victor Emmanuel II, thus disproving the theory.

🤴Theory 2: based on blood

Most European languages refer to royals as having "blue blood". The explanation given for this is usually that royals were much paler than most subjects, since most people worked outside under the sun while the royals stayed indoors in their palaces (that's also why being pale was a beauty standard and symbol of status in Europe's past, and still is in some countries such as Japan). As a result of their paleness, their veins and arteries were more visible compared to commoners. While commoners saw their own red blood when they got injured, they would also see the blue arteries visible under the royal's pale skin. It doesn't mean they literally believed that the royal family's blood is blue, but it was a way of referencing it.

The linguist Eugen Coșeriu defends that the paleness and veins would be a case of folk etymology, while the real origin of this expression comes from a mistranslation. The Ancient Roman historian Tacitus wrote about the Roman emperors being "caelesti sanguine ortam" (Latin for "born from heavenly blood"), since they were said to descend from divinized figures. Like in many languages nowadays, "sky" and "heaven" were the same word, and many of these languages derive a word for "light blue" from the Latin word for "sky" (like Spanish celeste). According to this linguist, in the early 17th century, Spanish humanists translated the expression "heavenly blood" (which would be "sangre celestial") as "light-blue blood" ("sangre celeste"). This expression became widespread and over time ended up simplified as "blue blood" ("sangre azul"). From there it would have spread to other languages.

But let's go back to the Blue Prince. According to this theory, the Prince is Blue as a reference to being royalty. This theory is okay but quite vague, so there is no piece of evidence that contradicts it, but there is also not enough evidence supporting it to safely make the claim.

Photos by Marco Ansaloni/Descobrir.cat and Planeta Dunia.

Ancient Roman mosaic that represents the mythological characters Medusa, Perseus and Andromeda. This mosaic was made in-situ in the late 2nd century AD or the early 3rd century AD in a domus (house) located in the Roman city of Tarraco (modern-day Tarragona, Catalonia). Nowadays, it can be seen in the National Archaeology Museum of Tarragona.

A Moorish prince volunteered to guard the treasure until the Muslim people returned to the land. The Arab magicians turned him into a bull, which is a noble and fierce animal.

The Christians conquered the lands and heard the story. They hurried to look for the treasure in all the caves, but they never found it. Since the Moorish people could never come back, the bull is still in the cave, guarding the treasure.

People say that, on a calm day, if you listen closely, you can still hear the muffled sounds of the bull, crying for the return of his people.

La Cova Santa ("The Holy Cave") in Vistabella del Maestrat, near the Penyagolosa mountain. Photo by Nacho Gimeno, from De Penyagolosa.

First of all, this is Sant Pol de Mar (in the Barcelona Metropolitan Ambit, Catalonia):

Photos from Catalunya Turisme and Alamy/Condé Nast Traveler.

If you ever meet someone from Sant Pol de Mar, you should ask them "what time is it?" (in Catalan: quina hora és?).

The reason is explained in two legends.

Legend one: a reminder of a bad decision!

The first one (which is the one I had always heard) talks about a sundial. Nowadays there's still many sundials outside old houses, but they're not as important because we have clocks and watches. But back in the day they were very important, because sundials and the church bells were the main ways to tell time accurately.

The legend says that Sant Pol de Mar's main sundial got damaged from wind and rain. The inhabitants fixed it, and to avoid having the same problem in the future they thought of a solution: protect the sundial from the elements by building a little porch over it. Only once it was installed did they realize that the sundial is useless if a porch is blocking the sun!

As you can see in the 1st photo in this post, the train line crosses right next to the houses, between the town and the sea, as it happens in many towns of the Maresme area. It's said that, when the train line was built in the 19th century, the passengers would open the windows as they crossed the town to shout "Sant Pol, what time is it?" to mess with the inhabitants, a question they wouldn't have been able to answer because of their stupid choice.

However, recently I learned that there's another explanation for this stereotype, and this one is much more tragic.

Legend two: the tragic version

This other story has been transmitted through oral memory and, even though it references real historical events that are well-documented, I have not been able to find proof of whether the specifics are a historical fact or a legend.

This tradition locates the origin in the context of Castilla's conquest of the Catalan Countries in the War of the Spanish Succession. In the year 1714, Catalonia was defeated, starting the annexation of Catalonia to Castilla (Spain) and the imposition of Castilla's so-called "right of conquest", abolishing Catalonia's historical form of government, laws, forbidding the use of the Catalan language in all official settings and forcing the use of Spanish instead, forbidding most Catalan culture holidays, the militarization of Catalonia, etc etc etc. The invading army committed many massacres, burned down whole towns and cities, and gravely mistreated the population, who was forced to host them in their homes and to dedicate a percentage of their fields to feeding the soldiers.

The Castillian and French troops took the town of Sant Pol on the 15th of February 1714. The army sacked the town and set it on fire, this is a historical fact. According to the oral memory, the new king Philip V of Spain, establishing his authority, ordered the town's bells to be destroyed. The reason for this is that bells were a way of calling the population, not just ringing every 15 minutes to tell the time and mark holidays, but also to warn the population when there are attacks and to rally them out to fight, a use that is well documented in Catalonia's resistance during this war.

Oral memory says that Philip V forbid the town from being rebuilt. The inhabitants built a kind of tents out of wood and blankets in the beach. Since they didn't have bells anymore, they couldn't have anyone on the belltower keeping watch and ringing the bells to warn when the king's men were approaching, so they had to keep watch from the beach and pack quickly when they came, taking refuge in their fishing boats. This would be the origin of the "Sant Pol, what time is it?" and also of the rhyme "a Sant Pol, la manta i la gent berganta" ("in Sant Pol, blankets and scoundrels").

View of the islet Es Vedrà in Eivissa, Balearic Islands. Photo by MsLids on Wikimedia Commons.

One of the most well-known Eivissan legends says that a long time ago the islet of Es Vedrà was inhabited by a moody giant who caused fear among anyone who passed near the islet.

One day, two brothers named Joan and Toni went to the islet to pick rock samphire, a medicinal plant they needed to cure their ill father. After having tried all sorts of remedies without any luck, they were told their only hope was using rock samphire picked in Es Vedrà (the islet has been associated with religious and magical stories since antiquity). Even though they were very scared of the giant, they were decided to do anything to help their father.

They sailed on their boat to the islet, praying that the giant wouldn't notice them. But right as they were mooring their boat, the giant woke up and captured them. Every day, the giant sent Joan to fish octopus, his favourite meal. Meanwhile, he kept Toni imprisoned in a cave as a hostage, so Joan wouldn't be able to escape. The giant said he wouldn't free them until they Joan had fished all the octopus in the area, adding that if he didn't bring enough octopus, he would eat both brothers.

One day in which Joan could catch many octopus, he came up with an idea: he hurried up to fish as many octopus as he could in one day, but made sure to hide a sea urchin inside each octopus. As always, when he brought them to the giant, he ate them all in one bite. But this time the sea urchins caused him such a stomach ache, that he went to sleep. Then, the two brothers used the moment to tie up the giant's hands and feet and escape, taking with them a cure for their father.

Even though Ramon Llull was a real historical person, there are many legends that talk about him. Born in the year 1232 in Mallorca, he was a prolific writer, philosopher, and theologist, who became the first European writer to use a folk language to write about science, instead of Latin. He wrote mostly in his mother language Catalan, but also in Arabic, Latin, and Occitan. He is one of the founding figures of Catalan literature and was very influential throughout the Christendom for centuries.

But added to the historical facts, many legends and folktales circulate about him or where he shows up, especially in his home island Mallorca.

Around the year 1274, Ramon Llull retired to the Randa mountain (in Mallorca) to meditate, where received the divine illumination to write his Ars. Also in all the area of Randa, you can find many bushes that look like this:

Photos from toponimiamallorca.net and Rafel Bauza Verd.

This is a kind of lentisk bush (Pistacia lentiscus) where the leafs have a change in pigmentation. In Mallorcan Catalan, this bush is called mata escrita, which means "written bush".

Some people say that these are the words dictated by God to Ramon Llull, which spread through nature written in a sacred Eastern alphabet.