Caganers in position, spoons in hand… Everything is ready for the Christmas feasts, the days when the diet is put aside and everything is delicious binges that leave us satisfied until next year. All over Spain we celebrate Christmas, New Year’s Eve, Christmas Eve? But in Catalonia, for some reason, we have one more holiday, Sant Esteve, which of course, also comes with a luxury feast.
You haven’t been to Christmas in Catalonia if you haven’t eaten cannelloni on December 26th. Surely you know that they are prepared with the leftover meat from the previous day’s escudella amb carn d’olla, but beyond that,why does Catalonia have one more holiday than the rest of the country during Christmas? Curious as we are, we have informed ourselves and we come to explain it to you.
Sant Esteve, the day to travel home after Christmas
Celebrating Sant Esteve in Catalonia links us to the Carolingian past of the territory. In the 9th century, Old Catalonia belonged to the empire founded by Charlemagne and depended on the bishopric of Narbonne, unlike the rest of the Christian Iberian Peninsula, dominated by the Goths, which had the bishoprics of Toledo as a reference.
In these two empires the concept of family was different : for the Carolingians the family was very extensive, like a clan, and when there was an important festivity it was necessary to go to the ancestral home.
This was the case at Christmas, the most important feast of the religious calendar, which brought the whole family together. And as in the Middle Ages the journeys were usually long (it is said that from what is now Ciutat Vella to Sants it was half a day’s walk), the days were short and the means precarious, people needed time to return home the next day .
For this reason, the day of Sant Esteve ended up being a day to go home, a day in which people did not work, which is not exactly the same as a holiday, with its corresponding saying: ‘En Navidad cada oveja en su corral / por Sant Esteve, cada uno en su casa’ (At Christmas each sheep in its pen / for Sant Esteve, each one in his house).
This explanation is not only useful for Sant Esteve, but also for the other holidays of Catalonia, Easter Florida and Easter Granada, which were also used to return home after the family reunion.
Why do we eat cannelloni?
The story of why we eat cannelloni in Sant Esteve is wonderful, because it unites feminist, working class and Barcelona history, and a curious Italian chef who taught French cuisine to Catalan workers. We tell you the whole story here.