A popular and much loved Catalan Christmas figure, this small statue, originally of a pooping peasant wearing traditional floppy red Catalan cap (barretina), crouches with trousers half down, in a ‘toilet’ position, making his small contribution to the land.

These pooey Catalan traditions may shed some light on the popular Catalan saying
“menja bé, caga fort i no tinguis por a la mort!” (Eat well, poo strong and don’t be afraid of death!)  

The poppy is a powerful and iconic symbol of remembrance in England, but did you know that the French have an equivalent, ‘Le Bleuet de France’, their own poignant reminder of the First World War?

A silence, our heads are bowed, a prayer from the Mayor. In turn the boys read out the list of the fallen sons of the Great War, perhaps a dozen names from those awful days.  This would have been a village of around a hundred people.

The original model used internationally for the teaching of C.P.R. (Cardio Pulmonary Resuscitation) and colloquially known as “Resusci Annie’ was based on an anonymous drowned French girl sadly pulled out of the River Seine in the late 1880s.