Festival of Sant Antoni: The parade of the animals

Our four-year-old came home very excited today from school, telling us how all the animals were going to be out on the street really early Sunday morning. Our wannabe street-wise older son kept telling him that it was nonsense, that animals didn’t go on the street, that they’d get run over by cars, that it’s just stuff that kids say, etc.

So we checked in the Tot Sant Cugat, and guess what, younger brother was right!

On Sunday, January 23th Sant Cugat celebrates the annual festival of Sant Antoni, also called “Festa dels Tres Tombs”. (Apparently it has nothing to do with tombs.)

It involves an animal parade which will stop at the old townhall (Placa Barcelona), where the priest will bless all the animals. From what I’ve been able to read, this was an originally pagan festival that was rebranded as Christian.

Vermont maple syrup, from Canada

If you want some real maple syrup, you can find “Vermont” maple syrup at the OpenCor on Rambla del Celler. The curious thing about the bottle is that it says “Product of Canada” on it. (In case you were wondering, Vermont is definitely not in Canada, it’s in the US.) Is this a good thing or bad thing?

According to my preliminary web research, it’s actually a somewhat bad thing, and at least one Vermont maple syrup brand had to pay a fine for repackaging cheap Quebec maple syrup and not mentioning it on the label. The Vermontians seem very protective of their syrup industry.

If you want slightly more premium maple syrup, Veritas usually has a better selection (at a not so much better price) of syrups. Be careful not to confuse it with be confused with the Agave syrup that has gotten popular lately (maple syrup is “sirope de arce”).

In case you were wondering what the “grades” are all about, here’s a good reference. Grade B is usually a good bet if you want lots of flavor.

Valencian vs Catalan to my uneducated ear

We recently took a trip down south to visit some relatives. Now that I know a bit more Catalan (all those hours listening to CatMusica while driving the kids this way and that), it was interesting to hear on the radio what Valencians made of their special language.

Basically it sounded exactly like a Spanish person reading Catalan phonetically, with a lot more Spanish words added. None of those super-closed vowels, U/O interchange etc. The weird thing is that closing the vowels sometimes makes Catalan actually sound closer to Spanish.

For example, In Catalan, “Les Planes” sounds a lot like “Las Planas”, which would be how you would write it in Spanish (unrelated footnote: if you look *way* up on the building at the FGC Les Planes stop you can still see an old “Las Planas” sign dating from Franco), whereas in Valencian you would just pronounce it “Les Planes” with the E’s sounding like regular Spanish E’s.

Catalan humor and the prudish Spanish

Our son’s homework yesterday consisted of drawing a sign, like no parking, etc and explaining what it means.

It looks like the Catalan culture is rubbing off on him, because he drew a rather explicit sign with the explanation:

“esta prohibit pixar a l’aigua” (it’s forbidden to pee in the water..).

Unfortunately I didn’t get a chance to take a picture of his work of art because it was censored. Let’s just say that it was quite anatomically correct.

“There is no way he is taking that to school. He’ll get in trouble.”

“Oh come on, it’s pretty funny. And besides, the Catalans love anything to do with bodily functions.”

“Sorry. It’s disgusting. I’m erasing it and he has to do a different sign.”

It didn’t look like I was going to win that particular battle, though I was impressed at how prudish Spanish people are with things to do with the bathroom. I wonder if this taboo in Spanish culture is carried over from the Arabs.

Those Americans are just not NORMAL

We overheard a cute conversation the other day on the FGC where two Catalan high-school students were talking the student exchange one of them did to the US:

“Did you know that they don’t put olive oil on their salads? They put all these weird sauces! And then they laughed at me when I put olive oil and salt on my bread! Those Americans are just not NORMAL! I couldn’t even make my pa amb tomaquet, so I just had to settle for olive oil and salt.”

The “not normal” phrase was repeated several more times in the conversation.

Starbucks introduces the “Trenta”

Just in case you thought your Venti wasn’t big enough, staring May 3rd (only in the US, mind you), you will now be able to gorge yourself on a 31 ounce (nearly 1 liter) Trenta iced coffee.

This will be slightly less than the McDonald’s 32 ounce iced drinks. Exactly when Starbucks will also start serving burgers and fries wasn’t announced.

Spanish salt consumption culprit: bread

A rather surprising statement from the EU report on salt reduction: the main source of salt in the adult population in Spain is bread. I would have thought it was the jamon, anchovies or the immense amount of salt they seem to put on their lamp chops.

Ironically enough, most Spanish people don’t seem to think their bread has enough salt already, and sprinkle even more on top. There appears to be some kind of plan to reduce the amount of salt bakers put in bread:

The Spanish Confederation of Bakeries have committed themselves to reduce the percentage of salt used in making of bread going from 2.2% in 2005 to 1.8% within four years time. Annually, the bakers will reduce the salt content with a rate of 0.1%.

Does Spanish bread have more salt than average? In the UK, it looks like bread has around 0.5% salt content, so it looks like Spanish bread is pretty salty.

Opus Dei and IESE Business School

I recently had some experience with a business course taught at the relatively prestigious business school in Barcelona, IESE. It was a couple day course on negotiation and was quite good until the last day. On the last day, a new teacher walks in and more or less out of the blue starts spouting off about how being gay was could be cured and the sanctity of marriage, etc. I suppose this was the mandatory Opus Dei service announcement. Everyone was looking at each other with a WTF look, but everyone was too chicken to say anything.

I think Opus Dei are kind of like the Mormons in the US. Cliquish, with aggressive missionaries, conservative, and very successful in business.

Something I find interesting about Opus is that they have a class of people that are called “Cooperators”, who don’t even have to be Christian, but provide various kinds of assistance to Opus. I assume there’s some kind of mutual back-scratching involved.

Financial Times had a good story about the school last year.

Update: I had some comments from a reader that IESE doesn't proselytize in their MBA program. From what I've heard as well, this is generally true. I'm not sure what was going on in this particular instance.