Easter at Barcelona

In april, Barcelona doesn’t escape to the traditional palm sunday and easter cake and the city, like others, has its own tradition. For this occasion, the streets and squares of Barcelona are conquered by stands selling palm branches and in the pastry shops, full of chocolate cake.

If you are on the catalunya square, walk up the rambla de catalunya street for instance and you will see 2 kinds, the simple palm branches and the woven ones. Beside them, there are also stands selling decorations and ribbons to decorate your branch before to go to the Mass on sunday.

All are wrapped in plastic to protect them and the

tradition wants that young girls carry the woven palm branches and the others, the long ones called palmons in catalan. Normally, if the godmother offers you one, you will have to decorate it. On sunday, after the Mass, everyone, who has a long palm branches, has to crash its base repeatedly on the ground and they will have to do it until they will be at home because the goal is to splinter it the most possible.

Except that, you can also see some traditional processions on good friday. For example, the cathedral of Barcelona at 15h is celebrated the sermon of the 7 words for the Christ of Lepanto and the San Jaime church (calle ferran 28) at 19h celebrating our Lady of Anguish.

After the palm sunday comes the most awaited and delicious tradition for kids which is the easter cake (mona de pasqua in catalan) symbolizing the end of the Lent. All cakes are made totally of chocolate and each pastry shop uses their imagination to create authentic masterpieces that it will be a great pain to eat them but at the end, all finish in the stomach.

Although the traditional cake is made only of sweet sponge and people eat it with chocolate, a hard-boiled egg and a dry spicy sausage. The tradition wants that the godfather or the grandfather offers a cake to his godson and his grandsons the easter sunday, also called flowery easter (pasqua florida in catalan), just after the Mass.

He has to do it each year until the children have 12 years old for their first communion and through the time, the egg has been replaced by a chocolate one although in the past, even now if people buy the traditional cake, the egg is decorated with colors and drawings.

Other traditional foods are the codfish (to be eat on friday because the meat isn’t allowed) cooked in different ways, the fritter, the torrijas (soaked fried slice of bread), the rosca (ring cake) and the pestiños (piece of fried dough glazed with honey or sugar).

But the tradition during the month of april doesn’t stop here, indeed there are 2 other ones, one is only celebrated in Catalonia called Sant Jordi and the other one is the April Fair imported from Seville. To know more about the first one, read my topic Sant Jordi, the catalan valentine day and for the 2nd one, April fair of Catalonia.