LA MERCÈ, BARCELONA ENJOYS AND RECOGNISES ITSELF

Leaving el Delta de l'Ebre is never easy, but knowing that on the way to Barcelona you'll make a morning stop in Tarragona to celebrate Santa Tecla with a spectacular castell event is always a great plan. 

If you then continue toward the capital and stop in Sitges in the afternoon -where they are also celebrating Santa Tecla- to enjoy the local culture and a delicious botifarrada by the sea, the journey home becomes much more pleasant, especially since your own city will be decked out the very next day to celebrate its own Festa Major.

Every September, Barcelona celebrates La Mercè.

For a few days, the city changes its rhythm. Squares become stages, streets become meeting places, balconies become viewpoints and thousands of people leave their homes to take possession of the city once again.

There are concerts, exhibitions, performances and events of every imaginable kind. Barcelona is a cosmopolitan city, home to people who have arrived from almost every corner of the world, and its Festa Major naturally reflects this diversity. And yet, year after year, some of the greatest crowds still gather around something much older.

A giant walking down a street. A human tower rising above a square. The sound of a gralla. The beating of drums. A dragon breathing fire into the darkness. 

Perhaps Joan Amades would not have been surprised. The great Catalan ethnologist devoted much of his life to collecting the customs, celebrations, songs, beliefs and traditions of ordinary people. His monumental Costumari Català understood popular culture not as something preserved behind glass, but as something alive: a collective language transmitted from one generation to another. La Mercè speaks that language extraordinarily well.

One of its most symbolic moments is the Toc d'Inici. The Festa Major begins not merely with words but with music, movement and ritual. The city's festive figures enter the scene and Barcelona seems to summon its own imaginary world into existence.

Giants and giantesses, dwarfs, beasts and traditional dancers are no longer decorative figures. For a few hours, they become inhabitants of the city. Then come the cercaviles. The giants advance slowly through streets that normally belong to buses, bicycles, taxis and hurried pedestrians. Children look upwards. Adults do too. There is something wonderfully subversive about a giant walking through a modern city. For a moment, everyday Barcelona disappears and another Barcelona emerges from underneath it.

And then there are the castellers. Few images can explain Catalan popular culture so powerfully. A castell exists only because many people agree to build it together. At its base, the pinya becomes an extraordinary human architecture of arms, shoulders and trust. Above it, floor after floor rises until the smallest casteller reaches the top and raises a hand. For a few seconds, the whole square seems to breathe as one. Strength alone cannot build a castell. It requires balance, courage, technique and, above all, confidence in others. Perhaps this is why the Diada Castellera attracts such enormous crowds during La Mercè. People are not simply watching a spectacle. They are watching a community construct something impossible and then carefully dismantle it again.

But Barcelona has another face during its Festa Major. When darkness falls, fire arrives. The Correfoc transforms the streets into a territory of sparks, drums, devils and fantastic beasts. Dragons and other creatures spit fire while the diables dance beneath showers of sparks. People do not merely watch. They run with them. Fire has accompanied Mediterranean celebrations for centuries. In the Correfoc, something ancient survives inside the contemporary city: our fascination with darkness, noise, danger, light and collective excitement. For a while, Barcelona ceases to look like the carefully ordered city of maps and avenues. It becomes elemental. Fire, smoke, drums and people.

Perhaps this is the most fascinating thing about La Mercè. Barcelona changes constantly. Languages change. Neighbourhoods change. People arrive and people leave. Buildings disappear and new ones rise. The city absorbs influences from everywhere because it has always been a Mediterranean port open to the world.

But when the Festa Major arrives, thousands of people still crowd into the streets to watch traditions whose roots reach far beyond their own lives. They wait for the giants. They follow the gralles. They look upwards when the castell begins to rise. They run beneath the sparks of the Correfoc. Modernity has not made these traditions irrelevant. Perhaps it has made them even more necessary. Because popular culture gives a city something that cannot be built with concrete or designed by an urban planner: a shared memory. And memory does not mean remaining trapped in the past. It means knowing where we come from while continuing to change.

Barcelona has traditionally been called the Cap i Casal de Catalunya. The expression is difficult to translate perfectly. It means much more than capital. Cap is the head; casal evokes the house, the home, the place where a community recognises itself. During La Mercè, the expression acquires a particularly beautiful meaning.

Barcelona is cosmopolitan, Mediterranean, contradictory, noisy, changing and extraordinarily diverse. But it is also the capital of Catalunya. And when the giants dance, when the gralles sound, when the castellers raise their towers and when the dragons fill the streets with fire, the city remembers it.

Perhaps Joan Amades would have walked among those crowds with his notebook in his pocket, observing everything. Perhaps he would have recognised many of the gestures. And perhaps he would have understood something that La Mercè continues to demonstrate every September: tradition survives not because we preserve it, but because we practise it. A tradition nobody performs eventually becomes history. A tradition that still fills the streets belongs to the present. And every September, during La Mercè, Barcelona does something wonderfully simple.

Perhaps this is why Joan Amades still feels so extraordinarily present during La Mercè. His work was never merely a catalogue of curious things that people used to do. By collecting giants and dances, songs and sayings, legends, beasts, customs and celebrations, he helped preserve the collective memory of a country.

In 2009, when Barcelona dedicated part of La Mercè to Amades on the fiftieth anniversary of his death, he was beautifully introduced almost as the character of a folk tale:

Once upon a time, there was a man who travelled throughout Catalonia asking people to tell him about their customs and traditions, so that he could write them down in a book and make sure that nobody would forget them.

And perhaps that is the best way to understand both Amades and La Mercè. Because traditions do not survive simply because somebody once wrote them down. They survive because somebody still carries the giant. Because somebody still plays the gralla. Because somebody still climbs onto another person's shoulders. Because somebody still dresses as a diable and lights the fire. And because thousands of people still come out into the streets to see them.

Barcelona changes. It has always changed. But beneath that constantly changing city there is another Barcelona made of gestures, sounds, memories and rituals passed from one generation to another.

Barcelona is the Cap i Casal. And every September, when the drums begin to beat, the giants start to dance and the first sparks illuminate the streets, that old Barcelona does not return from the past. It reminds us that it never left.

For during La Mercè, the enchanting magic of popular culture takes over the city, and each of us transforms for a day into whatever we wish to be -a devil, a casteller, a capgròs, or a queen -because this is Barcelona, ​​the heart and soul of Catalunya.

The city recognises itself.

Come and enjoy it with us. You are all invited!

More information: Runner Bean Tours

He fet el pregó per ser barcelonina, 

per dir-me Mercè 

i per dur Catalunya dintre meu.

I gave this opening address because I am a Barcelonian, 

because my name is Mercè, 

and because I carry Catalunya within me.

Mercè Rodoreda, Pregó de La Mercè, Barcelona, 1980

'PARLO D’UN RIU MÍTIC I REMORÓS' BY GERARD VERGÉS

Parlo d'un riu mític i remorós
Tot sovint penso que la meva infància
té una dolça i secreta remor d'aigua.

Parlo de la verdor d'un delta immens;
parlo dels vols dels ibis (milers d'ibis
com volves vives de la neu més blanca)
i del flamenc rosat (de l'íntim rosa
d'un pit de noia gairebé entrevist).

I parlo del coll-verd brunzint per l'aire
com la pedra llançada per la fona,
de l'anguila subtil com la serpent,
la tenca platejada de les basses.

Parlo del llarg silenci on es fonien
l'aigua dolça del riu, la mar amarga.

Parlo d'un riu entre canyars, domèstic;
parlo –Virgili amic– de l'horta ufana,
dels tarongers florits i l'api tendre,
de l'aixada i la falç, del gos a l'era.

(Lluny, pel cel clar, va un vol daurat de garses.)

Parlo d'un riu antic, solcat encara
pels vells llaguts: els últims, llegendaris
llaguts, tan afuats com una espasa,
i carregats de vi, de llana, d’ordi,
i amb mariners cantant sobre la popa.

Parlo d'un lent crepuscle que posava
or tremolós a l'aigua amorosida,
punts de llum a les ales dels insectes,
solars reflectiments als ponts llunyans.

Dolça remor de l'aigua en el record.

I'm talking about a mythical rumbling river

I quite often remember my childhood's 

sweet secret rumble of water.

I'm talking about a green immense Delta;

I'm talking about thousands of ibis in flight

(like living specks of whitest snow)

And the pink flamingo (the intimate rose

of an almost discerned girl's breast).

I'm talking about mallards buzzing on the air,

like stones thrown from a sling,

subtle eels like snakes,

silvery tenches in ponds.

I'm talking about a long silence melting the fresh

water of the river and the bitter sea.

I'm talking about a domestic river among reed-beds;

I'm talking -my friend Virgil- about rich orchards,

flowery orange trees and tender celery,

hoes and sickles, dogs in fields.

(There in the sky gilded magpies are flying.)

I'm talking about an ancient river,

still furrowed by old catboats:

the last, legendary catboats,

tapered like a sword,

and full of wine, wool, barley,

with sailors singing on the stern.

I'm talking about a slow dusk providing

with trembling gold on softened water,

lights on the wings of insects,

solar mirror on distant bridges.

Sweet rumble of water in memory.

More information: Gerard Vergés

Dolça remor de l’aigua en el record.

Sweet rumble of water in memory.

Parlo d'un riu mític i remorós

Gerard Vergés

EL DELTA DE L'EBRE. WHERE LANDS, VOICES & PEOPLE MEET

A river never understands borders. It simply flows. The Ebre enters Catalunya from Aragon, crosses the land towards the Mediterranean and finally reaches the sea through the extraordinary landscape of its Delta. But rivers do something else. They connect people.

During the last few days, Claire Fontaine and The Grandma have discovered two different faces of the Delta de l'Ebre. They have walked through a landscape transformed by generations of rice farmers and fishermen. They have remained silent beside lagoons, waiting patiently for flamingos, herons and migrating birds. But there is something else they want to understand before leaving. The people.

Because the Delta belongs to a much larger cultural landscape: the Terres de l'Ebre. And this is a land with a voice of its own.

Maps encourage us to think in lines. Here ends one territory. There begins another. Culture is rarely so obedient. The southern lands of Catalunya have always maintained intense relationships with neighbouring territories. To the south lie the northern regions of the País Valencià, particularly the Maestrat; towards the west are the lands of Aragon. People have travelled across these territories for centuries to work, trade, marry, celebrate and exchange words, recipes, songs and traditions. Consequently, the Terres de l'Ebre should not be understood simply as the southern end of Catalunya. They are also a meeting place. A cultural crossroads. And perhaps this explains why their identity feels so distinctive.

You can hear the territory before you see it. Language immediately tells Claire and The Grandma that they are somewhere special. The Catalan spoken throughout the Ebre region belongs predominantly to the north-western dialectal area, but proximity and centuries of contact with Valencian varieties have produced a linguistic landscape rich in local forms. Words such as lo and los, characteristic verb forms, vocabulary and pronunciation give the speech of the Ebre its unmistakable personality. These are not imperfect versions of a language. They are the language carrying its own history. Every local word contains journeys, neighbours, occupations and generations. Language, after all, is another kind of landscape.

But if there is something that refuses to recognise administrative borders even more stubbornly than a river, it is music. The jota travelled and developed across Aragon, Catalunya and the País Valencià, acquiring different forms wherever people made it their own.

In the Terres de l'Ebre, the jota ebrenca became deeply rooted in popular culture. People sang it at celebrations and gatherings. Verses could be improvised. Singers could answer one another. Everyday events, love, humour, criticism and collective memory could all become songs. The jota therefore did something extraordinarily important. It allowed ordinary people to narrate their own lives. And that tradition has not disappeared.

Groups such as Quico el Célio, el Noi i el Mut de Ferreries have brought traditional Ebre music to contemporary audiences, demonstrating that preserving tradition does not mean embalming it. Tradition survives precisely because every generation makes it speak again.

And inevitably we return to the Ebre. For someone looking at a map, it is a geographical feature. For the communities living beside it, it can mean much more. The river has provided water, transport, food and work. It has shaped towns and landscapes. It appears in literature, songs and collective memory. And when people have believed that the river or the Delta was threatened, it has also become a powerful symbol around which communities have mobilised.

This relationship helps explain a phrase that has become inseparable from the territory: Lo riu és vida. The river is life. Three words. But behind them lies an entire landscape.

Perhaps Claire and The Grandma understand something else as their journey comes to an end. Identity does not necessarily become weaker where territories meet. Sometimes it becomes richer. The Terres de l'Ebre have absorbed influences without losing their personality. Catalan, Valencian and Aragonese cultural worlds have encountered one another here for generations. That does not make the territory less itself. Quite the opposite. Its position at the crossroads is part of what has made it what it is. You can hear it in an accent. Taste it in a dish. Recognise it in a jota. Read it in the words of Sebastià Juan Arbó, Artur Bladé i Desumvila or Gerard Vergés. And see it whenever the Ebre finally opens into the Mediterranean.

It is time for Claire Fontaine and The Grandma to leave. They have seen rice growing from mud and water. They have watched fishermen working between river and sea. They have waited quietly while flamingos crossed the shallow waters and migratory birds rested before continuing south. And finally, they have listened. To words. To songs. To stories. To a river.

Perhaps this is the best way to understand the Delta de l'Ebre and the lands surrounding it. Not merely as somewhere to visit, photograph and leave behind. But as a place created through an extraordinary conversation between nature and people, river and sea, memory and change.

Claire and The Grandma look towards the Ebre one last time. The river continues towards the Mediterranean. It does not know whether the land beside it is Catalan, Valencian or Aragonese. It knows only one thing. It must reach the sea. 

More information: Delta de l'Ebre Port

Estes coses del folkore,
molta gent les ha oblidat
perquè ja no els interessa
que es digue la veritat.

Són unes jotes de l'Ebre:
consells i amors de veritat;
si a algú molt li han agradat,
mos haurà d'anar radere.

These are jotes from the Ebre,
with honest counsel and true love;
and whoever has enjoyed them
will have to come along with us.

These traditions of our folklore
have been forgotten by many,
because they no longer want
the truth to be told.

Quico El Célio, El Noi i el Mut de Ferreries

…QUE HI HA UNA VEU QUE CRIDA ‘LO RIU ÉS VIDA’

Hem sigut una terra que ha fet feliç a qui se l'ha estimada.
Hem tingut una gent que sempre l'ha viscut apassionadament
i una mala notícia va recórrer el Delta com una ventada:
podríem perdre l'aigua i mos tocaria viure un mal moment.

Mos van amoïnar posant a prova tota la nostra paciència,
mos van amoïnar sense importar-los si teníem la raó
i la nostra raó se va donar la mà en la raó de la ciència:
Va nàixer una cultura per acostumar-mos a viure millor.

Tota la gent de l'Ebre està ben unida
per una veu que crida "lo riu és vida".
I als pobles de la terra ja no s'oblida
que hi ha una veu que crida "lo riu és vida".

Sortíem al carrer i érem poqueta gent, les primeres vegades,
i la millor sorpresa va ser descobrir que no estàvem sols.
Ja no érem una gota, n'érem moltes més, ja no semblàvem riuades;
riuades d'aire fresc que tocaven la pell i arribaven als cors.

Tenim la nostra música, lo nostre vent, tenim la nostra serra.
També tenim una vella i bonica forma de parlar.
I un riu que s'obri pas de la muntanya al mar entremig de la terra,
un riu que dóna vida i al que tots junts hem après a estimar.

Tota la gent de l'Ebre està ben unida
per una veu que crida "lo riu és vida".
I als pobles de la terra ja no s'oblida
que hi ha una veu que crida "lo riu és vida".

Ours has been a land that brought happiness to those who loved it.

Ours have been people who always lived it with passion,

and then bad news swept through the Delta like a gust of wind:

we might lose our water and face a truly trying time.

They troubled us, putting all our patience to the test;

they troubled us, caring little whether we were right,

yet our cause joined hands with the voice of science:

a culture was born, teaching us to live a better life.

All the people of the Ebre stand united

by a voice that cries out: "The river is life."

And in the towns across the land, no one forgets

that a voice is crying out: "The river is life."

We took to the streets, just a handful of us at first

and the greatest surprise was discovering we were not alone.

We were no longer a single drop, but many; we became a rushing tide

a breath of fresh air that touched our skin and reached our hearts.

We have our music, our winds, and our mountain range.

We also have an old and beautiful way of speaking.

And a river that carves its path from the mountains to the sea,

a river that gives life -one we have all learned to love together.

All the people of the Ebre stand united

by a voice that cries out: "The river is life."

And in the towns across the land, no one forgets

that a voice is crying out: "The river is life."

More information: Quico El Celio i el Mut de Ferreries

Tota la gent de l'Ebre està ben unida
per una veu que crida "lo riu és vida".
I als pobles de la terra ja no s'oblida
que hi ha una veu que crida "lo riu és vida".

All the people of the Ebre stand united

by a voice that cries out: "The river is life."

And in the towns across the land, no one forgets

that a voice is crying out: "The river is life."

Lo Riu és Vida

Quico El Célio, el Noi i el Mut de Ferreries

EL DELTA DE L'EBRE, A GREAT LAND OF WINGS AND WATER

September is a particularly beautiful time to visit the Delta de l'Ebre: the rice harvest begins, summer birds start to leave, and those that will spend the winter in the Delta begin to arrive. In autumn, the still-flooded rice fields become vast feeding grounds for thousands of waterbirds.

Claire Fontaine and The Grandma have brought something essential with them today. Binoculars. And cameras. But, above all, patience. Both are passionate birdwatchers, and few places in Catalonia could offer them a greater reward than the Delta de l'Ebre. Here, watching birds is not simply about identifying species or collecting photographs. It means stopping, remaining silent and allowing the landscape to reveal itself.

Last Friday, they talked about a Delta shaped by human hands: rice fields, fishing boats, canals and generations of people who learnt how to live between river and sea. Today, they have come to discover another Delta. The one that flies.

The extraordinary biodiversity of the Delta de l'Ebre begins with its landscape. River, sea, bays, beaches, dunes, salt marshes, lagoons, riverside woodland, freshwater springs and rice fields coexist within a remarkably small territory. Each environment creates different conditions, and each attracts different forms of life. Its vegetation tells the same story of adaptation.

Near the sea, plants must survive salt, wind and shifting sand. Sea lilies grow among the dunes, while rushes, reeds and salt-tolerant vegetation occupy marshes and lagoons. Some plants have developed remarkable mechanisms simply to survive in soils where salt would make life impossible for many other species. Nothing here seems accidental. Every plant has found its place between fresh water and salt water, dry sand and flooded soil. And where different habitats meet, wildlife flourishes.

But sooner or later, anyone visiting the Delta looks towards the sky. Birds are perhaps its most spectacular inhabitants. More than 360 species have been recorded in the Delta over time, and the wetlands support internationally important populations of breeding, migrating and wintering birds. The area is consequently protected as a Special Protection Area for Birds and has been included in the Ramsar List of Wetlands of International Importance since 1993.

For Claire and The Grandma, this means paradise. There are the unmistakable flamingos, sometimes standing almost motionless in shallow water and sometimes suddenly transforming the landscape into a cloud of pink wings. There are grey herons and little egrets patiently waiting for prey; black-winged stilts walking on impossibly long red legs; avocets sweeping their delicate upturned bills through shallow water; marsh harriers flying low over the reeds; ducks, gulls and countless waders searching the mud for food. Some are residents. Others are only travellers. And this is precisely what makes September so exciting.

Claire and The Grandma have arrived at a time of change. September marks a transition in the Delta. The rice harvest begins. Summer visitors start their journey away from the wetlands, while other birds begin to arrive to spend the colder months here. For many migratory birds travelling between Europe and Africa, wetlands such as the Delta de l'Ebre are essential resting and feeding grounds. Their journeys may cover thousands of kilometres. Yet here, for a few hours or a few days, they stop.

A small wader walking along the mud may therefore have come from somewhere unimaginably distant. The bird Claire is photographing today may soon continue southwards. The one The Grandma is watching through her binoculars may not be here tomorrow. Perhaps that is part of the fascination of birdwatching. You are observing something that cannot be repeated.

The Grandma raises her binoculars. Claire prepares her camera. And then they wait. Good birdwatching requires something that modern life increasingly seems determined to take away from us: patience. You cannot ask a flamingo to move into better light. You cannot tell a heron to fly. You cannot persuade a shy wader to come closer because your camera lens is not powerful enough. You simply wait.

The Natural Park itself recommends morning and evening as particularly good times for observing birds and reminds visitors to watch and photograph wildlife only from the designated places, without disturbing it. And gradually something curious happens. The longer you remain still, the more you see. A movement among the reeds. A silhouette crossing the sky. A sudden call from somewhere across the lagoon. A group of birds landing in a rice field. The landscape that initially seemed silent becomes extraordinarily busy.

This is perhaps the greatest lesson the Delta offers Claire and The Grandma today. Nature is not scenery. The dunes are not merely beautiful shapes in the sand. The reeds are not decoration around a lagoon. The flooded rice fields are not simply mirrors in which photographers can capture spectacular sunsets. They are habitats. They provide shelter, food, breeding grounds and resting places for creatures whose lives depend upon the delicate relationship between land and water. And suddenly birdwatching becomes something more than a hobby.

To observe an animal closely is to become interested in its life. To become interested in its life is to understand what it needs to survive. And once we understand that, protecting its habitat no longer seems like an abstract environmental idea. It becomes personal.

The Grandma lowers her binoculars. Claire takes one last photograph. Somewhere above them, another group of travellers continues south. There is no passport control in the sky. Only ancient routes written into instinct, connecting northern Europe, the Mediterranean and Africa. And down below lies the Delta de l'Ebre: a place to breed, a place to feed, a place to rest. For humans, it is an extraordinary landscape. For millions of other travellers, it is something much more important. It is home -even if only for a while.

More information: Guia d'Ocells-Parc Natural del Delta de l'Ebre

Oneja el verd als arrossars, des d'una torre mirador, 

on espiar els ocells... 

Terres fecundes de la Plana del Delta, 

que l'au convida... 

Creua la tarda un núvol rosa... 

Alada simfonia en clau salvatge!

Green ripples through the rice fields, from a viewing tower, 

where one can watch the birds... 

Fertile lands of the Delta Plain, 

welcoming the fowls... 

A pink cloud crosses the afternoon... 

A winged symphony in a wild key!

Josefina Peraire

SÓN PAISATGES I COLORS [...] SÓN DE LA TERRA DE L'EBRE

Baixo el Coll de Balaguer
entre mel i gent pesquera
i, com si es tanqués el mar,
veig la Punta del Fangar.
Brilla el far entre les dunes,
la primera llum del Delta.

Mil ocells blancs em saluden
quan travesso les llacunes:
olor d'arròs, colors d'aigua,
arbres grans i solitaris.
Al fons, la sal de la Banya,
des d'on la Ràpita canta.

Sota el capell de Montsià
enfilo cap al Marjal,

de la vora del riu Sénia
veig camins que van al sud:
les mateixes oliveres...
els mateixos garrofers...

Ebre amunt, ciutats antigues,

entre torres i campanes
guarden les pedres dels íbers,
les monedes dels romans,
les cançons i l'art dels moros
i les cases dels cristians.

Per hortes, barrancs i planes,

s'amaguen arbres i cases:
pobles de gent sense pressa,
que crida amb el vent de dalt,1
que pren el sol quan treballa
i corre el bou quan hi ha festa.

Cap a les terres de dalt
roques com les de Benet,
serres com les de Cavalls i Pàndols,
i un vi que porta alegria,
inspiren pintors, artistes,
somniadors de nit i dia.

I, al mig de tot, el gran Port
que és la muntanya més alta:
es pot veure, en dia clar,
del Pirineu a Mallorca,
el Coll de l'Alba, Cardó
i tots els colors del Delta.

Diu que al Tossal dels Tres Reis,
quan fa vent, sona una jota,
i que la canten tres veus,
tres veus que se saben entendre:
Matarranya, Maestrat
i la gran terra de l'Ebre.

Qui és qui sap d'on vé la jota,
si puja o baixa pel riu,
si arriba de dins del mar,
o si la cantava un moro?
Qui és qui sap si vé del mar,
o el vent de dalt ens la porta?

Són paisatges i colors,
són pobles, cases i pedres,
són històries i són anys,
són els hòmens i les dones.

Són sentiments, són amors...
Són de la terra de l'Ebre.

I descend the Coll de Balaguer

amidst honey and fishing folk,

and, as if the sea were closing in,

I see the Punta del Fangar.

The lighthouse gleams among the dunes,

the first light of the Delta.

A thousand white birds greet me

as I cross the lagoons:

the scent of rice, the colors of water,

great, solitary trees.

In the distance, the salt of La Banya,

from where La Ràpita sings.

Beneath the peak of Montsià

I head toward the marshlands;

from the banks of the Sénia River

I see paths leading south:

the same olive trees...

the same carob trees...

Up the Ebre, ancient cities

amidst towers and bells

guard the stones of the Iberians,

the coins of the Romans,

the songs and art of the Moors,

and the homes of the Christians.

Amidst orchards, ravines, and plains,

trees and houses lie hidden:

villages of unhurried folk

who shout with the northern wind,

who bask in the sun while they work,

and run with the bulls during the festival.

Towards the highlands

crags like those of Benet,

ranges like Cavalls and Pàndols,

and a wine that brings joy

inspire painters, artists,

and dreamers by night and day.

And, in the midst of it all, the great Port

the highest mountain of all

where, on a clear day, one can see

from the Pirineus to Mallorca,

the Coll de l'Alba, Cardó,

and all the colors of the Delta.

They say that at Tossal dels Tres Reis,

when the wind blows, a jota plays,

sung by three voices

three voices that understand one another:

Matarranya, Maestrat,

and the great land of the Ebre.

Who knows where the jota comes from

whether it travels up or down the river,

whether it arrives from the sea,

or if a Moor once sang it?

Who knows if it comes from the sea,

or if the wind from the hills brings it to us?

They are landscapes and colors,

they are villages, houses, and stones,

they are stories and years,

they are the men and the women.

They are feelings, they are loves...

They belong to the land of the Ebre.

More information: Quico El Celio i el Mut de Ferreries

Són paisatges i colors,
són pobles, cases i pedres,
són històries i són anys,
són els hòmens i les dones.

Són sentiments, són amors...

Són de la terra de l'Ebre.

They are landscapes and colors,

they are villages, houses, and stones,

they are stories and years,

they are the men and the women.

They are feelings, they are loves...

They belong to the land of the Ebro.

De la Terra de l'Ebre (D.O.)

Quico el Célio, el Noi i el Mut de Ferreries

EL DELTA DE L'EBRE, A LAND MADE BY WATER AND PEOPLE

The Grandma is wrapping up her final in-person classes. She has just a couple left before she begins organizing her students' internships.

That is why she has decided to get away for a few days to the Delta de l'Ebre. She knows the Terres de l'Ebre region well; in fact, she is in love with it. 

Visiting the area means enjoying a unique natural landscape and excellent cuisine, but above all, it means enjoying wonderful people and very dear friends.

And she hasn't travelled alone. This time, Claire Fontaine has joined her adventures.

There are landscapes that seem to have existed forever, and others that remind us that the Earth is still being made. The Delta de l'Ebre belongs to the latter.

Here, at the end of the longest river entirely contained within the Iberian Peninsula, land and water have been negotiating their boundaries for centuries. The Ebre carried sediments from distant mountains and plains towards the Mediterranean, slowly depositing them at its mouth and creating a vast, flat territory where the horizon seems almost infinite.

But the Delta as we know it today is not only the work of the river. It is also the work of people. For generations, the inhabitants of these lands have learnt how to live in a territory where fresh water and salt water meet, where the sea enters the land and the land advances into the sea. They have dug canals, cultivated fields, sailed across lagoons and bays, fished in shallow waters and transformed an apparently inhospitable wetland into their home. Few things explain this relationship better than rice.

Today, it is almost impossible to imagine the Delta de l'Ebre without its rice fields. They shape its landscape and determine its colours throughout the year. There is the brown earth of winter, the mirror-like water of the flooded fields, the intense green of the growing plants and, finally, the golden tones that announce the harvest.

Rice cultivation expanded especially from the nineteenth century onwards, when irrigation canals made it possible to bring water from the Ebre across large areas of the Delta. What had once been marshland could gradually be transformed into agricultural land. It was not an easy transformation. Working in the rice fields meant long days in water and mud, under the sun, surrounded by mosquitoes and exposed to diseases that once made life in the wetlands particularly difficult. Generations of farmers shaped this landscape through enormous physical effort. The result was more than a crop.

Rice became part of the identity of the Delta. The calendar of the fields became the calendar of its people: preparing the soil, flooding the land, sowing, watching the rice grow and finally harvesting it. Agriculture created a rhythm that was repeated year after year and connected families to the same fields across generations.

Even today, when machines have replaced much of the hardest manual labour, rice remains one of the clearest symbols of the relationship between the people of the Delta and their land.

But the Delta cannot be understood only through agriculture. It must also be understood through fishing. The Mediterranean, the river, the lagoons and the two great bays -the Badia del Fangar and the Badia dels Alfacs- have provided food and livelihoods for centuries.

Fishing here has traditionally required an intimate knowledge of water: its depth, temperature and salinity; the winds; the seasons; the movements of fish; and the subtle changes that announce whether the sea will be generous or difficult. els, mullet and other fish have long formed part of local fishing traditions, while the sheltered waters of the bays have also become closely associated with shellfish cultivation, particularly mussels and oysters.

At places such as Sant Carles de la Ràpita, l'Ampolla or Deltebre, the relationship with water is visible everywhere. Boats, ports, fishing gear, markets and kitchens all tell the same story: here, the sea and the river are not simply part of the landscape. They are part of everyday life. And inevitably, what people harvest from the fields and obtain from the water eventually meets on the table.

Rice, fish and shellfish have created a cuisine that is inseparable from the territory: arròs a banda, arròs negre, eel dishes, mussels, oysters and many other recipes born not from luxury, but from proximity and necessity. They are dishes that taste of landscape.

Perhaps this is what makes the Delta de l'Ebre so fascinating. People did not simply settle on this land. They had to learn it. They learnt where water could be controlled and where it could not. They learnt how to cultivate soil that had once been marsh. They learnt when to fish and when to remain ashore. They learnt to read winds, currents, seasons and the river itself.

The Delta demanded adaptation, patience and resilience. And in return, it created a distinctive way of life. For outsiders, a rice field may simply be a beautiful landscape reflected in water. A fishing boat crossing a lagoon at sunset may look picturesque. But behind those images there are generations of knowledge, labour and memory.

The landscape exists because nature created the possibility and human beings learnt how to inhabit it. Perhaps that is why the Delta de l'Ebre cannot be described simply as land or simply as water. It is both. It is river and sea, mud and salt, rice and fish, farmers and fishermen. Above all, it is a place where people have spent generations learning one essential lesson: you do not conquer water. You learn how to live with it.

More information: Turisme Bot

A pocs pobles l'home 

ha treballat com al nostre, 
tan durament i sense descans, 

en el seu combat amb la terra.

In few places have people 

worked as they have in ours, 
so hard and tirelessly, 

in their struggle with the land.

Sebastià Juan Arbó