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Festival of Sant Antoni with its parade of the three tombs

The fiesta mayor de Sant Antoni is the most expected traditional festival after Christmas. Like you can guess, it is celebrated in the Sant Antoni neighborhood in january with the fires of the “trabucaires” waking up the people.

I will translate trabucaires as blunderbuss men, a catalan word appointing to a soldier armed with a blunderbuss (a kind of shotgun with a flared ending). In the past, this name was given to the bandits and each time, they fire, a big noise is coming out from this gun.

This is how this local festival starts, so that everyone living in this area, know it and if there are still some people in the bed, they have no choice than to wake up

because it is really very noisy. This party lasts 1 week and different activities are organized. Situated outside of the city wall, its name was given because in the past, there was a church owning the same name although its urbanization was later integrating it into Barcelona with its own festivities and traditions together.

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The parade of the three tombs is one of the activities to not miss. It is a procession of ancient carriages and the blessing of animals so if you have a dog, a cat, a mouse… well any kinds of animals, you can bring it and it will bless !!!

The correbars is to go to different famous bars of the area and meanwhile you will enjoy a drink and why not some tapas, you will listen live music played by local bands. Do I just say tapas ? Don’t miss the tapalagana, a competition of tapas so for a few euros, you will try the specialty of the bar, just created for this event, with a glass of wine. The caracolada is for people who like snails or if you want to try this popular food cooked with a special sauce.

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Except foods and parades, there are other things like theatre (if you don’t understand catalan neither spanish, you can skip it), running competition, karaoke, concerts, dance and much more.

And if you are here for the last weekend of this local party, you don’t have to miss the traditional castellers (human castle, also known as human tower) and the correfoc (parade of demons throwing fireworks).

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In fact, during the week, most of the activities start around 17h and only in the weekend that you will have fun all day from the morning, generally, around 10h until midnight so if you plan to be in Barcelona in january, try to be there between the 2nd friday until the 3rd sunday. For the full program, check its official website (only catalan).