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Showing posts from May, 2019

Sardana

Sardana plays a significant part in the life of the Catalan people. They dance sardana during all celebrations. The dance is not complicated, anybody can learn to dance it in a few minutes.  It does no matter how old you are, from where you are....everybody can dance sardana! :) Sardana has very interesting history. The oldest found reference to the word sardana is from 1552 but is possiible that sardana was known even before. At the beginning was danced only in the Emporda region. In the 19th started to become popular in all Catalonia. How to dance sardana? Everybody join together in a circle. They hold hands and follow a set of steps. The dance lasts about 12 minutes. Here you can see a short video and learn how to dance sardana. I hope that the next time you are in Catalonia you will dance sardana!

4. My favourite places in Barcelona - Casa Batlló

Casa Batlló is my favourite building designed by the most famous Catalan architect  Antoni Gaudí. It  was the first thing which I saw in Barcelona when I came there for the very first time. I will never forget this moment. This amazing work of art is just beautiful.   This is the moment when I saw Caso Batlló for the first time! The building was constructed in 1877 and renovated according to Gaudi's design 27 years later for Batlló family. Josep Batlló I Casanovas was a textile industrialist who owned a few factories in Barcelona. He and his wife asked Gaudi to design a building that no one had ever seen before. The Catalan artist used the opportunity and created something really excepcional.  The Catalan name for the building is Casa dels ossos (House of Bones) because the facade of the building has the form of a skull. What I like the most of Casa Batlló is that is decorated with a mosaic of broken ceramic tiles. Thanks to that Casa Batlló has so many colours. I a

Girona Temps de Flors (11-19 of May)

The second week of May is always the most magical time of the year in Girona.  During the festival Girona Temps de Flors (eng. flower season) you can see amazing flower arrangemeents at every turn. In my opinion, at this time the city becomes the world capital  of  nature and art. The first edition of the festival took place in 1954 and was growing year after year. Now people from all over the world come to take part in the event. During the festival there are a lot of flower carpets  on the streets. Almost every historical monument in Girona is decorated witch flowers. You can admire many orginal artistic exhibitions made of plants. Girona Temps de Flors is not only flower festival. I t's also a great opportunity to see many Catalan tradition like for example  els castells -  the human towers .  What's more,  d uring   the festival you can participate in many concerts and artistic performences.   This is how it looked like one year ago.  Have you ever

Tarraco Viva Festival (5-19 of May)

Tarraco (nowadays Tarragona) was one of the most important city of the Roman Empire during the reign of Octavian Agustus. Every year here is organized the Tarraco Viva Festival. Thanks to the event we can back in time and feel like the citizens of the Roman Empire. During the Roman Empire Tarraco was the capital of the Roman province Hispania Tarraaconensis. It was the first Roman city of Spain and the most developed one of all the Iberian Peninsula. Here you can see how Tarraco looked like 2.000 years ago and how it looks like now. The Tarraco Viva Festival offers a lot of activities like for exaple: a gastronomic festival of ancient recipes of the roman cuisine, music and dance shows and many reenactments of life in Roman Empire. At this link you can see some fragments of the historic performances of the gladiator fights. This show every year takes place in the ruins of the orginal ancient Roman amphitheater which was built in the 1st century. https://www.youtube.c