La Diada de Sant Jordi (St. George's Day), also known as el dia de la rosa (The Day of the Rose) or el dia del llibre (The Day of the Book).St. George is the patron saint of Catalonia. His day is celebrated on April 23rd and this has been Catalonia’s own Valentine’s Day since the Middle Ages. That was when St. George slew the dragon, saved the princess and plucked a rose from a rose bush that had conveniently sprouted up from the dragon's red blood, so that George could gallantly give his true love a red, red rose.
Roses have been associated with this day since medieval times, but the giving of books is a more recent tradition. In 1923, a bookseller started to promote the holiday as a way to honour the nearly simultaneous deaths of Miguel Cervantes and William Shakespeare. Barcelona is the publishing capital in both Catalan and Spanish and this heady one-two punch of love and literacy was quickly adopted.
On Barcelona's most visited street, La Rambla, and all over Catalonia, thousands of stands of roses and makeshift bookstalls are hastily set up for the occasion. By the end of the day, some four million roses and 400,000 books would have been purchased in the name of love. You will be hard-pressed to find a woman without a rose in hand, and half of the total yearly book sales in Catalonia take place on this occasion.
(Most of this information was gotten from Wikipedia.)
1 comment:
That sounds so fun! I wish I could be there to see all the stands. (Too bad I couldn't read any of the books.)
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