All Saints Day in Barcelona

It seems as though every day is associated with a saint in Spain, but November 1 is All Saints Day, Todos los Santos. Indeed, Halloween, increasingly celebrated here on October 31 with costumes and trick-or-treating for children, started as the hallowed evening before the day of all saints. As in the U.S. for most people, now there is a disconnect between Halloween and any religious observance.

But El Día de Todos los Santos is an important holiday. One of the first signs is in the sales promotions on memorial flower arrangements in the week leading up to the festival. People do remember those in their family who have passed on. Another sign is the number of red prayer candles lit in church alcoves in honor of the dead.

I do not normally go to church on All Saints Day, but that just happened to be the day that I was able to see the Cathedral in Barcelona's Gothic Quarter. The Cathedral, officially known as Cathedral de la Santa Creu i Santa Eulalia (after the patron saint of Barcelona) and also known as La Seu, dates from 1298. Like many churches in Spain, it replaced an earlier Roman temple and a mosque, which had both been built on the same site. Many people were streaming in to visit during the early Sunday afternoon, and so many were coming out from a mass that we didn't even venture into the cathedral proper--we just wandered through the large cloister area between the street and the cathedral.

Immediately to my right upon entering the cloister was an alcove for St.Rita; of all the alcoves with their lighted prayer candles, this one had the most. The saints' stations surrounded a large tropical courtyard entirely within the cloister, and in the middle of the courtyard was a large pond with geese swimming nonchalantly, seemingly unaware of the significance of the day. But I've done some homework since returning home, and now I've learned that there probably were thirteen geese in the cloister, each representing one year in the life of Santa Eulalia, a young martyr to Christianity during Roman times.