Holy Mother of God

Today is the 15^th of August. It’s a holiday here: Mare de Déu d'Agost, also known as Assumpció de la Mare de Déu (Mary’s ascension into heaven) or simply called l’Assumpció.

I’m not Catholic and when I first came to live in Catalonia I was confused by all the Mares de Déu. As far as I knew, there was only one Virgin Mary. Holy Moley! How could they celebrate so many?

They are scattered throughout the year: Mare de Déu de la Mercè, Mother of God of Mercy, in Barcelona in September; Mare de Déu del Carme, Our Lady of Mount Carmel, the patron saint of seafaring communities, celebrated in July up and down the Catalan coast. Then there is Mare del Déu de Setembre, better known as Immaculada. That’s when the holy virgin Maria was born. That’s celebrated on the 8^th of September. There are others, but I don’t remember them all. In fact, none of my Catalan friends could name them all.

In addition to the holidays, there are the statues. These are referred to en masse as “les maresdedeu trobades” (the found mothers of God). These are antique statues that, legend says, were hidden during the time of the Muslim rule. They would be found by a farmer in the woods or in a field and taken to the local church. Sometimes it would subsequently disappear and be found again where it was found the first time. In some cases this happened several times.

The statues are from the 13^th century, the Romanesque period. They are made of painted wood and have the Virgin seated, with the baby Jesus on her right knee often with a ball with a cross in her left hand. Sometimes in her right hand she will be holding a fruit or a bird.

These Mares de Déu would be named for the place where they were found, so there is the Mare de Déu de Núria, Mare de Déu de Queralt, Mare de Déu de Meritxell (not a place name) in Andorra, and the most famous and celebrated in Catalonia, Mare de Déu de Montserrat. There are at least a dozen others just in Catalonia, near me is the Mare de Déu de Mont, and more in other parts of Spain.

These statues are considered to have been born (again) when they were found, and so are celebrated on the same day as the birth of Mary, l’Immaculada.

So many Marys, so many holidays, and it’s so quiet outside. Everyone has their own way of celebrating but it’s August, all the shops are closed, it’s very hot, and everyone is probably at the beach or up in the mountains. I doubt that many of them are thinking about holy virgins.

Fire, Wind, and War in Portbou

Photo: Emporda Info

Wildfires terrify me. Unfortunately I have always lived in places prone to them. First there was southern California, then northern California, and now Catalonia. These are places that are relatively dry and that get hot in the summer. California gets the hot Santa Ana desert wind usually for a week or two in September. But the tramuntana blows on and off throughout the summer and the rest of the year. That makes summer fire season especially dangerous.

Tramontane is a classical name for a northern wind. The word comes from the Latin for beyond or across the mountains and it referred to the Alps. The word is also used to refer to someone who comes from beyond the mountains or anyone who is foreign or strange. More or less the same word is used throughout the Mediterranean. In Croatia it is called tramontana, in France it is tramontane, and in Catalonia it is tramuntana. There is a saying in Catalan culture (especially in the Empordà) that refers to a person as touched by tramuntana (tocat per la tramuntana) when they behave oddly or seemly lost their marbles. Salvador Dalí was often referred to as someone tocat per la tramuntana in his native Empordà.

I moved to Figueres, in the Empordà, in June 2012. Two weeks later in July, there was a huge fire that started in La Jonquera, the last inland town along the major highway before the French border and not far north of here. I could smell it before I knew there was a wildfire. I had my windows closed even before the authorities told us to, making it very hot at home. I was making plans in my head for how to evacuate with my two cats, but in the end it wasn’t necessary.

Yesterday in the late afternoon a fire started near Portbou, the last village on the coast before you cross the border into France. So far it has burned over 575 hectares and caused the highway and railroad to be closed. This means that people who live or are vacationing in either Portbou or neighboring Colera and Llança haven’t been able to enter or leave since yesterday evening. They also have no electricity, water or phone. Those who have been evacuated from their homes or camping sites are being lodged at the civic center, attended to by the Catalan government and the Red Cross. Over 200 Catalan and French firefighters are fighting the fire, but helicopters and airplanes that would drop water can’t fly when the wind blows at over 70 miles an hour, so containment has been difficult.

Portbou is a small village with a big history. Now it serves as a summer holiday spot, but historically it was important during two wars.

During the Spanish Civil War between 200,000 and half a million Spaniards (the number depends on your source) fled Spain within weeks of Franco’s troops taking Barcelona in late January 1939. Called La Retirada (The Retreat), many of them crossed the Pyrenees at Portbou.

Photo: Robert Capra

On 26 September 1940, during World War II and the German occupation of France, Walter Benjamin, a Jewish philosopher, cultural critic, and essayist, committed suicide by morphine overdose in Portbou. Benjamin had been living in France since 1933 and was fleeing the Nazis who the Vichy authorities were cooperating with. Having been helped by the virtually unknown American rescue worker Varian Fry, he had arrived in Portbou by climbing the mountains to cross the border with great difficulty, burdened by a briefcase containing his precious writings that he refused to leave behind. But Franco had suddenly cancelled all transfer visas so once in Spain, the Spanish police detained him and the small group he was traveling with. They were to be sent back to France the next day. Benjamin killed himself that night rather than go back and be handed over to the Nazis. The next day the procedure changed again and his two traveling companions were allowed to pass through Spain into Portugal from where they could sail. The manuscript that Benjamin had been carrying at such cost was never found. There is now a memorial to Walter Benjamin at Portbou by the Israeli artist Dani Karavanhe that sits on a clifftop by the Portbou municipal cemetery.

Photo: Vikipeida