Do people in the Catalan countries have any important funeral traditions? In my culture we keep pictures of deceased relatives in our homes with incense and oranges
We have important unique traditions related to keeping the memory of our dead relatives (especially the ones related to the Day of the Dead), but they are not done in the moment of the funeral. I explain below the funeral parts, but they are generally the same as other Catholic cultures.
The most important moment of remembrance for the dead people, like in the rest of cultures with a Christian background, is the Night of Souls (October 31st), All Saints' Day (November 1st), and the Day of the Dead (November 2nd). The tradition says that on these days the souls of the dead visit the living. Technically, according to the religion on All Saints' Day the living visit the dead (people go to the cemeteries) and on the Day of the Dead it is the dead who visit the living, but both dates have gotten merged over time and now everything is done at once on November 1st.
Here are some traditions that happen on these dates in Catalan culture. When I have talked about them previously in the blog, I will link the post where I explain it in more detail so this post doesn't get too long.
On the night of October 31st, we celebrate the Castanyada or Souls' Night. People meet with the family or friends for this meal. Traditionally, when serving dinner, an extra place is set at the table for the dead person that we wish to remember. We eat special sweets for this holiday (panellets everywhere + other local ones in each area) and roasted chestnuts, and drink moscatell sweet wine.
Every year on November 1st, people go take flowers to the cemeteries and clean or decorate the tombs of their loved ones. Cities and towns put extra public transport to go to the cemeteries on these days because they know they're going to be very busy. This is still very widespread, the other things I will include on this list are done almost exclusively by old people nowadays.
Candles are placed at the windows to guide the souls home for the night. Other people make tealight candles floating on water. They are left lit all night long. Sometimes instead of on the windows they can be left in the room of the person who died. Nowadays it has also become more common to light the candle in front of a photo of the person.
Eating pomegranate around these days, because each pomegranate seed eaten is said to be a soul in purgatory that goes to Heaven.
In natural places where someone has died -or a legend says that someone died- as a result of a crime or an accident, people who walked by would throw a stone to that place as a show of respect.
Back in the day, parent used to hide the traditional sweets of this holiday (panellets) around the house, and the next morning children could play to look for them. Children were told that these sweets were left by the souls of relatives who visited them at night (works similar to Christmas).
Other moments where the dead people are brought up:
Other moments when the person is remembered and relatives take flowers to the grave include the anniversary of their death and their birthday.
For people who are religious, when they need help with something, it has been historically common to light a candle to a specific dead relative to ask for their help. This little altar works the same way as a when asking help to a saint, because it's understood that the relative is in Heaven too.
Same as in other countries, here too in the past it has been widespread to believe that the stars in the night sky are souls. When thinking of a dead loved one, people used to look for a particularly bright star and they could think that's them. Some said that very bright stars are souls in purgatory who can't cross to Heaven and are calling for attention (prayers can make souls in purgatory go to Heaven sooner), while the dim stars are souls in Heaven who are satisfied. Shooting stars were said to be souls who are leaving Purgatory who are ascending to Heaven.
For the funeral process itself, we don't have unique funerary traditions, as far as I know, except for some songs and dance that used to be done when a newborn died, but we don't do those anymore, infant mortality is very low, so for once we are lucky to have lost those traditions. Some musicians who do traditional music still pass them down.
When a child died, people used to dance to the "wake songs". This was done until the 1930s in the Valencian Country and the south of Catalonia (Terres de l'Ebre region), and it seems like it was lost in the rest of Catalonia much earlier.
The French artist Gustave Doré drew it in 1890, because he saw it happen in the town of Xixona (Valencian Country) when he was travelling there and he found it very surprising that people threw a party when a kid had died.
Here's some examples of wake songs. The lyrics are allegorical to the death of their loved child or talk about the ritual itself.
I translated this song in the post linked here.
Our funeral process follows the way it works in Catholic countries, even though more people do non-religious funerals nowadays it still follows the old Catholic structure: bell ringing, wake, ceremony, transport, and burial. I explain this process under the cut.
Announcing that someone has died: this has traditionally been done with special bell ringing played from the church bell tower. It can start in a different way to call attention, but the distinctive element of the bell ringing for death (campanes a morts) is that it's a slow and serious way of playing, where the bell ringer alternates two bells with different pitch. He rings a bell once, lets its sound go down slowly, and only once it has dimmed completely he rings the other bell, in the same way letting it extinguish its sound by itself before playing anything else. You can see it in these videos: bell ringer from Vilaplana, bell tower in Vistabella del Maestrat. They can be done differently in different areas of the country, but the important thing is that it's always consistent in the same place because it is recognisable by the inhabitants. Back in the day, they used to play it differently if the person who died was a man, a woman, a little boy, or a little girl. You can hear the child bell ringing in this video: toc d'albat in Banyeres de Mariola (first he plays the one for a little girl and later for a little boy). Now, in most places this bell ringing tends to be done to signal a mass for a dead person is about to begin.
2. The wake (vetlla): when someone has just died, their closest relatives are visited by friends, family, and neighbours to give their condolences and show support. Basically, people will come by throughout the day and stay for a while, talking to the relatives and sharing fond memories of the person who died. The wake is traditionally done in the deceased person's home with the body there present, so people can say their last goodbye. Nowadays, it's often done in a wake room of a funeral parlour, with the deceased person inside the casket (the casket can be open so people can say the last goodbye or it can be closed, it's up to the family). The wake lasts 1 day or at most 2 days.
Here's an unexpected thing I found. I searched on google to see if I could find any image of a wake room to illustrate this, and I found something I didn't know. Apparently, funerary parlours in Barcelona rent both "Catalan-style wake rooms" and "Castilian/Spanish-style wake rooms", which are slightly different. According to the funeral parlour workers interviewed in that article, almost everyone prefers to do it in the Catalan-style ones "because it allows for more proximity to the deceased and because it's how it's always been done", but the larger funerary parlours offer both options to adapt to both cultural groups.
The difference is that in Catalan-style wake rooms the dead person is in a refrigerated barrow that allows the relatives to surround them and get close if they choose to (to leave flowers, to whisper something to them, whatever). In the Spanish-style, the dead person is inside a glass box, which is also refrigerated, but it keeps the person clearly separated from the living.
According to one of the experts interviewed, the origin of this difference is because in Southern Spain it's hotter than in Catalonia, so the flowers die more quickly and need extra refrigeration. I assume this difference is very recent, only since we have refrigeration in the 20th century, because older Spanish paintings show wakes looking the same as the Catalan ones.
Painting Look How Pretty She Was by the Southern Spanish artist Julio Romero de Torres, c. 1895.
2. Ceremony: two days after the person has died, they are buried. First, there is a ceremony. Traditionally, this was a mass done in church, nowadays it depends on how religious the person who died was. It's most often done in a non-religious funerary parlour and the family can choose to include a priest for a part of it or not. The main thing in the ceremony is that the closest relatives stand up to speak about them. Everyone wears black clothes in the ceremony and the funeral, to show they are in mourning. (Relatives may choose to continue wearing mourning clothes for as long as they feel like it after the funeral, back in the day widows specially were expected to wear black for a year or sometimes for the rest of their lives! My grandma has told me that her grandma wore mourning clothes all her life since her father died when she was 9 years old, because after less than a year another relative died, so she started the next mourning, and this happened a few times and by then it was difficult to take the public decision of stop being in mourning).
3. Transport to the burial. Like in all Christian societies, for most of history we used to bury the dead next to the the church. In the early 1800s, it was decided that for hygienic reasons all the cemeteries would be moved outside of the cities/towns. Since then, moving the dead from the place of the ceremony (back then, the church) to the cemetery they would be buried became a very visible part of the process. It was also where you could see the social status and the popularity of the person who had died. The richest people would have very elegant and very decorated funerary carriages with many, many people walking in procession behind them, holding flowers and candles. (My mother has told me before that this is one of the things she remembers a lot in her childhood, seeing the long processions leaving the town to go to the cemetery behind the beach, she described as something that would be very impactful to see). Nowadays, the ceremony is done in funerary parlours, which are usually next to the cemeteries, so the transport is easy and quick. In addition, lots of people are cremated, so the ceremony is done with the ashes urn, which makes it even easier to transport.
4. Burial: while everyone who knew the deceased and their relatives is welcome to the ceremony, the burial is a more intimate moment reserved for the family and the closest friends. People are usually buried in a family niche, though wealthier families might have a family pantheon, and in rural areas you might get buried directly on the ground. Nowadays, there's also other options. One that is becoming increasingly popular is to be buried in the ground with tree seeds in the ash urn, so a tree will grow from the ashes.
Example of a cemetery with its niches. This one is in L'Espluga de Francolí.
I think these steps are the same in all Catholic countries or Southern European countries. It's different from Protestant countries like the USA or England because we do it very quickly (the person is buried 2 or 3 days after the day they died, while in Anglo countries it might take over a month!) and we don't have the cheerful meals we see in American movies, it would feel out of place for us. A meal with the priests, grave-digger, and all the family used to be done 100+ years ago, but it was humble food (lots of areas had their own traditional food for funeral meals but it was always humble, like rice with cod, escudella soup, or dishes based on lentils or chickpeas) and it was a sad situation where people didn't speak much or spoke in a low voice.
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For many kids, the best moment of the Corpus holiday is jumping to the flower carpets right after the last person on the procession walks through them, to get nice carnation flowers to bring home. (I did the same when I was little 😝)
This video is from the town La Garriga (Barcelona Metropolitan Ambit, Catalonia). Videos by Visita la Garriga.
Corpus Christi holiday in the town of Borrassà (Catalonia).
Many towns in the Catalan Countries and some other countries with a Catholic history celebrate the holiday of Corpus Christi making flower carpets. In the evening, the giants, the members of the devils' dance, the moixiganga, and the religious procession solemnly parade the town walking on the flower carpets.
Photos from Origen Borrassà, Nerea Guisasola /ACN, ACN, Tramuntana TV, CRAE, Ajuntament de Borrassà.
The male dragon (drac) and female dragon (víbria) of the city of Reus, Camp de Tarragona, Catalonia. Here they are dancing on the streets during the local festivities of the Misericòrdia.
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A 700-year-old tradition: the pilgrims of Les Useres
It is unknown why exactly this tradition started, but it seems to have started in the 14th century, most likely in the event of a catastrophe such as a drought.
Since then, every year on the last Friday of April, 13 chosen inhabitants of the town of Les Useres (Castelló, Valencian Country) go on a 35km-long pilgrimage crossing forests going up more than 1,000 m up the Penyagolosa mountain to reach the Sant Joan chapel (1893 metres above sea level). This is done to ask for health, peace, and rain from the sky (in Latin: da nobis salutem et pacem, et pluviam de caeli). And then they walk back to the town.
The 13 men are 1 guide and 12 pilgrims, who will walk and chant during the pilgrimage. They are a parallel to Jesus Christ and the 12 apostles in the Via Crucis (Christ's path carrying the cross to be crucified, a walk that is very spiritually significant in Christianity and replicated in many Christian rituals). They are followed by 25 people and animals who carry the food and tools the pilgrims will need, as well as other townspeople who want to, who march in silence together.
All the clothing, route, food, everything is planned and done following the detailed tradition, starting at 3:30 am.
Video from À Punt notícies. More information: Generalitat Valenciana and Atlas visual de la Comunidad Valenciana.
If you visit rural towns in the Catalan Countries, you will likely see many windows painted with this shade of blue:
Photos from the towns: Valls, Cabassers, Guimerà, Ascó, Vall-de-roures, Ràfols, Chelva, unknown rural location in Catalonia, Artana, Bàscara, Horta de Sant Joan.
You can also see it in historical paintings, like these ones by Santiago Rusiñol:
Some decades ago, we would have seen it much more in the walls of houses, but in the last few decades it has become popular to destroy the wall coverings of historical buildings in order to show the stones they're made of. This is an aesthetic decision because in the present many people feel like seeing the stones makes it more "rurally beautiful", despite the fact that traditionally houses were rarely left without whitewashing covering. But taking a walk in many towns, it's still common to see it. The place where it's always been used the most is on windows and doors, especially on the inside (like on the 5th and 11th photos).
The same colour is found in other parts of Southern Europe and Northern Africa. Though the case that is nowadays most famous is Chefchaouen in Morocco, which was created in the 1950s-1970s as a touristic attraction, it is true that the pigment was commonly used traditionally. When the walls were white-washed, it was common to add cobalt to make this blue colour. In Catalan, it's called blauet (diminutive of "blue").
I don't know about the other countries, but here this blue colour is said to make insects go away (maybe because they see it as if it were water). Some people also say it can repel the evil eye, it's used to symbolically protect the house.
When I was looking for photos to use in this post, I found that not many websites talk about it, but most of the few who do repeat some false information. If you want to read the corrections, you'll find my explanation on why the two most repeated claims are false under the cut.
Some real estate websites who want to sell houses in our country to rich "expats" saying that the town is full of this colour because of its "Mediterranean essence" and because it's "a fishermen's town" and things relating it to the sea. That is not the case, it's true that cultures in the Mediterranean region use this pigment, but it's not associated to the sea and it does not appear more often in coastal areas. You'll find just as many examples in the inland, if not more. Those claims are just a way to exoticize the coast and sell it with the words that these rich foreign people want to hear for their Mediterranean fantasy, disregarding the truth about the local culture.
That's what foreigners or people selling things to foreigners have to say. Now let's look at another possible mistake repeated in many local websites.
They claim that this colour was invented for the first time in the year 1704 by a Prussian man named Heinrich Diesbach. For this reason, this colour is also known as "Prussian blue". According to these websites, he would have been the first person to start using cobalt to make blue, claiming that before him the colour blue had to be made with the very expensive lapislatzuli, thus blue was extremely expensive before 1704. This is not only false, but shows a tremendous ignorance of Early Modern archaeology, because the vast majority of table pottery in the 1600s and early 1700s Catalan Countries and other parts of Europe was blue made with cobalt oxide. Cobalt blue was a very widespread pigment combination since the 1500s, and already present in this part of Europe since the 1400s!
Exhibition of pottery found in the archaeological site of El Born in Barcelona, Catalonia. The site was demolished and covered up in the year 1717, but most of the pottery is from the 1600s. These are examples of what is called "Catalan blue ceramics".
You might also have heard of Delft blue pottery, made in the Dutch city of Delft in the 1600s and 1700s, often with motifs inspired by Chinese porcelain (though Delftware is not porcelain). That's also blue made with cobalt.
Heinrich Diesbach might have made a synthetic pigment mixing different materials (including cobalt oxide) and industrially produced it to sell. But cobalt oxide had been known and used for centuries. It was pioneered in the Middle Ages in modern-day Iraq. It became very popular because the Persians sold the pigment to the Chinese (in China known as "Muslim blue"), where it was used to make the famous Chinese porcelain (which was very popular throughout Asia and to a lesser extent parts of Africa and Europe, in the Early Modern period it would also become very popular in Europe). Through the Arabs, it reached Southern Europe, where it became very popular, and in Catalonia it ended up becoming the single most popular colour for pottery for a while.
Left: the David Vases, an example of Chinese pottery using cobalt to make blue. Made in Yuan dynasty China in the year 1365.
Middle: an example of Iznik (Turkey) pottery from the Archaeological Museum of Istanbul. Made around 1480.
Right: vase made in Italy around the year 1520. Sèvres Museum.
I don't know how long it has been used to paint walls, but we can definitely find it in many European tiles since the 1400s reaching a lot of popularity in the 1600s-1700s including among the artisan class (lower class). Blue pigment would by no means have been unknown nor limited to the expensive lapislazzuli in Southern Europe before 1706.
I have found this short documentary by an anthropologist about how this blue colour was used in Vall-de-roures (La Franja) to paint the walls and whiten clothes. The industrially-made pigment that was comercialized to paint walls and wash clothes with until recently was still made of cobalt, as explained by this anthropologist. So, as pointed out in the comments, it can't be Diesbach's invention, because Prussian blue's novelty was the very fact that it doesn't use cobalt.
So, as far as I know, there is no evidence to claim that the use of blauet in whitewashing walls comes from Diesbach's commercialized combination, or that it was not done before Diesbach's invention.
But it's hard to say when it started. I haven't found much research about blauet's historical origins. Searching for it is also made difficult by the fact that the word blauet in Catalan is also the name of one of the most colourful birds of our country: the kingfisher. And there's many people talking about this bird, he's definitely a popular guy!
