Every year on March 3rd, residents of the neighborhoods in the district of Gràcia in Barcelona celebrate the Festa de Sant Medir.
In Catalan, this festival is fondly known as la festa més dolça — the sweetest festival — owing to the literal tons of candies (caramelos) tossed to spectators from parade contingents.
These caramelos are individually wrapped hard candies of the sort that many grandmothers keep in a bowl on their coffee tables year-round. In any given year, 60 to 100 tons of caramelos fly through the air to be caught by delighted children, adults, and abuelas replenishing their hard-candy inventory for the next year.
Throughout the morning, about between 20 and 30 “gangs” (colles, singular colla) parade through the streets in small, individual contingents of marchers, simple floats, horse-drawn carriages, and ornately-dressed mounted horses. Each colla has its own flags and ceremonial gear. Almost every member of the contingents has a box or bag of caramelos for tossing.
In the afternoon, these colles make their pilgrimages to the hermitage of Sant Medir in Sant Cugat, about 13 kms (8 miles) away.
In the evening, all of the colles come together for a grand procession down Gran de Gràcia from Nil Fabra to Plaça Nicolas Salmeron, where dignitaries and city officials review the parade.
Throngs of spectators line the streets, some with open umbrellas turned upside down to harvest the airborne candies like fisherman trolling the seas with nets.
Don’t wear your best shoes to the parade; afterwards the sidewalks will be littered with candies that didn’t get caught, which people are now walking on, making the streets very sticky and coating the soles of shoes with sugary shards.
Legend of Sant Medir
“Why,” you may ask, “does this happen? What is the source of such an unusal tradition?”
A local legend tells the tale of a Catalan farmer named Medir who lived just outside of Barcelona, in Sant Cugat, in the early 4th century, during the reign of Diocletian, a Roman emperor who ruthlessly persecuted Christians.
One day in the year 304 CE, out of fear of this persecution, Barcelona’s Bishop Severus fled the city. Outside the city, he encountered a farmer named Medir in the fields planting broad beans.
Severus told Medir that he had accepted that he would probably die for his faith, and admonished him to be truthful if the Romans came by asking if he had seen the bishop pass that way.
As soon as the bishop went on his way, the beans that Medir had just planted miraculously shot up and bloomed.
Shortly after, the Romans indeed came along and asked Medir about the bishop. Medir answered truthfully that Severus had passed by while he was sowing his beans.
Seeing the fully-grown plants in the field, the Romans believed that Medir was mocking them; after they caught the bishop, they returned to arrest the farmer, too.
Both were imprisoned and martyred; Medir was later venerated as Saint Medir (Sant Medir) and the bishop as Sant Sever.
Fast forward to 1830. Oral history records that a local baker, Josep Vidal i Granés, began a pilgrimage to the hermitage of Sant Medir in Sant Cugat from his home, fulfilling a promise he made to the saint when he petitioned him for a cure from a grave illness he was fighting.
To call attention to his pilgrimage, Josep would bang a drum and hand out beans. In this way, he created the first colla that established the tradition that evolved into the festival we have today. Somewhere along the way, the beans were replaced with sweets, hence “la festa més dolça.”
It’s important to note that oral history and legends sprout many variations; I share here the stories that were told to me by my neighbors.
Sant Medir is always celebrated on a working day, so if the 3rd of March falls on a Sunday, the festival is moved to the 4th of March.