Monalia's World

We were awaken at 7:00 AM to the sound of fireworks. Mark went outside in his slippers and messy hair and looked up to see skyrockets exploding over Placa Taulet. He looked up the street and saw that it was full of horses, around 25 horses with riders. By this time I joined him. The horses roamed around our street for an hour while men dressed up in odd uniforms with non-sensical military badges and knee high leather boots set off batches of explosives at either end of the street. Musicians appeared and joined the people on horseback. Then a couple of open back trucks drove up and everyone got into formation in a long caravan. The musicians started to play and march, everyone started to move forward. Our neighbor came out and yelled at me “abre tu puerta! abre tu puerta!”, so I did. The caravan of singing musicians and horseback riders marched past, and then came the trucks filled with adults and children. When they drove past our house they took huge handfuls of candy from their bags and pummeled us with a shower of caramelos. The candy went into the house, in my hair, on the street. Then the next truck came by and did the same thing. Amazing!

We wandered down our street which now seemed to be full of candy and horse shit, all mixed together and crunched up in the middle of the street. We heard lots of noise coming from Plaça Taulet and headed that way. I turned the corner and saw that the street leading into Taulet was absolutely full of candy. Old Catålan biddies were bending down and filling their bags with the caramelos. They seemed to be enjoying it as much as the kids.

There was mayhem in Plaça Taulet. Huge throngs of kids were pushing against barricades screaming and waving their hands for candy. The parade would come by and shower the children with candy by the bagful. Everything was happening directly in front of the ajuntament building with ajuntament officials standing on their balconies also pelting the kids with candy whenever the urge came upon them.

Mark recorded the kids screaming, the marching bands playing, the horses clomping in the streets while I snapped photos.

Things seemed to die down so we went back home. Mark tried to work for a while but the caravan kept returning and throwing candy at our house. It was just too much fun to ignore.

The whole thing went on well into the night, climaxing with fireworks around 8 PM.