THE FLYING FORD ANGLIA, WHEN A CAR BECAME MAGIC

It is the third day back from vacation; The Grandma's body is still sluggish and her mind scattered. 

She has enjoyed her favourite antidote: a Lego set. This time, she has decided to build the Weasley family's Ford Anglia and she has invited Claire Fontaine to join in on the build.

Some vehicles are remembered because they are fast. Others because they are beautiful, luxurious or revolutionary. And then there is a small pale-blue Ford Anglia that once flew across the British countryside carrying two young wizards towards Hogwarts.

In the world of Harry Potter, magic usually comes from wands, spells, potions and enchanted objects. Yet one of the most memorable magical objects in the entire saga began its existence as something completely ordinary: a family car.

The Ford Anglia belonging to Arthur Weasley becomes one of the great symbols of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. It is funny, unreliable, illegal, surprisingly brave and, eventually, wonderfully independent.

In other words, it is a perfect Weasley car.

The existence of the flying Ford Anglia tells us something important about Arthur Weasley long before the car begins its greatest adventure. Arthur works at the Ministry of Magic and is fascinated by Muggle technology. Unlike many witches and wizards, who either ignore the non-magical world or look down upon it, Arthur approaches it with genuine curiosity and affection. 

The car represents that fascination. He has secretly modified a Ford Anglia 105E, enchanting it so that it can fly. He has also given it an Invisibility Booster and magically expanded its interior and luggage space. 

There is something wonderfully characteristic about Arthur's choice. He does not enchant a prestigious sports car or an expensive limousine. He chooses a modest British family car.

The real Ford Anglia 105E was introduced by the Ford Motor Company in 1959 and became a familiar sight on British roads during the 1960s. Its distinctive rear window, sloping backwards, made the model immediately recognisable. It belonged to everyday Britain. And perhaps that is exactly why it belongs so naturally in the world created by J. K. Rowling: Harry Potter constantly places extraordinary things inside apparently ordinary British life.

Behind a brick wall there can be Diagon Alley. Beyond an ordinary railway platform there can be Platform Nine and Three-Quarters. And inside a small Ford Anglia there can be a flying machine.

The car first becomes important when Harry is effectively imprisoned at 4 Privet Drive by the Dursleys. Ron Weasley, accompanied by Fred and George, decides that waiting for adults to solve the problem is clearly not an option.

So they borrow -or, more accurately, steal- the enchanted Ford Anglia and fly to Surrey. The image is unforgettable: a pale-blue car floating outside Harry Potter's bedroom window while the Dursleys sleep inside the house. But beneath the comedy lies something more important. The car becomes Harry's vehicle of escape.

Harry's life with the Dursleys is defined by confinement. His bedroom has been locked, bars have been placed across his window and his connection with the magical world has been deliberately cut off.

Then Ron appears in a flying car. It is difficult to imagine a more literal representation of friendship arriving to set somebody free. The Anglia carries Harry away from Privet Drive and towards the Burrow, one of the first places where he experiences something resembling a loving family home. For Harry, therefore, the car does not simply transport him geographically.

It takes him from isolation to belonging.

Its most famous journey comes shortly afterwards. When Harry and Ron cannot pass through the barrier leading to Platform Nine and Three-Quarters, they make one of those decisions that seem perfectly reasonable only when you are twelve years old.

They take the car. Their flight to Hogwarts is one of the defining sequences of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. They follow the Hogwarts Express northwards, flying above roads, fields and railway tracks. For a while, the adventure feels exhilarating.

Then reality intervenes. The Invisibility Booster begins to fail. The car struggles. The boys are seen by Muggles. And when they finally reach Hogwarts, their spectacular arrival ends not with a heroic landing but with a crash into the Whomping Willow.

It is pure Harry Potter: wonder, humour, danger and disaster compressed into a single journey. The episode also reveals something essential about Harry and Ron's friendship. They are loyal to each other, courageous and resourceful -but they are also children capable of making spectacularly bad decisions together.

Magic does not prevent them from making mistakes. Sometimes it simply makes those mistakes much bigger.  After crashing into the Whomping Willow, something extraordinary happens. The Ford Anglia throws Harry, Ron and their luggage out, ejects them from its interior and drives away into the Forbidden Forest. From that moment onwards, it seems to cease being merely an enchanted object.

It becomes almost alive. Months later, when Harry and Ron are in terrible danger in the Forbidden Forest, surrounded by Aragog's enormous family of Acromantulas, the Anglia suddenly returns. No wizard is driving it. Nobody has summoned it. It simply appears. The battered little car charges through the spiders, rescues the boys and carries them back towards safety before disappearing once again among the trees. It is one of the strangest acts of heroism in the series. A machine enchanted by Arthur Weasley has apparently developed enough independence to survive alone in the forest -and enough loyalty to return when Harry and Ron desperately need it. The car that they once used to rescue Harry eventually comes back to rescue them.

The Ford Anglia also represents something fundamental about the aesthetic of the Harry Potter universe. This is not a world where magic replaces ordinary life. Magic transforms ordinary life. Trains still exist, but one of them leaves from Platform Nine and Three-Quarters. Schools still have homework, teachers, exams and sports competitions, but the staircases move and the portraits talk. Families still own old cars. Some of those cars simply happen to fly. That mixture between the mundane and the impossible is one of the reasons why the wizarding world feels so tangible. The Ford Anglia is funny precisely because we recognise what it is supposed to be. A modest family car has no business flying through the clouds beside a steam train. And yet, somehow, it feels completely natural.

The Ford Anglia has relatively little time in the enormous Harry Potter story, but its presence is unforgettable. Perhaps that is because it represents several of the ideas at the heart of the saga. It represents Arthur Weasley's curiosity and tolerance towards a world different from his own. It represents Ron's loyalty to Harry. It represents childhood rebellion and the wonderful conviction that rules can occasionally be ignored when a friend needs help. Above all, it represents escape. The first time Harry travels in the Anglia, it carries him away from a house where he is unwanted. The last time we see it play an important role, it carries Harry and Ron away from creatures that are about to kill them. Between those two journeys, something curious has happened.

The machine has become a character. Perhaps that is the real magic of the flying Ford Anglia. Arthur Weasley enchanted a car so that it could fly. But somewhere along the road -or somewhere above it -the little blue Ford seems to have learned something that no spell could easily explain: how to be free. 

And perhaps even how to be a friend.

More information: National Motor Museum

Look, the forest has turned it wild.

Ron Weasley

CRIDAT, ARA ENTRARÉ EN LES FOSQUES ESTANCES...

El sol ha anat daurant
el llarg somni de l'aigua.
Aquests ulls tan cansats
del qui arriba a la calma
han mirat, han comprès,
oblidaven.

Lluny, enllà de la mar,
se'n va la meva barca.
De terra endins, un cant
amb l'aire l'acompanya:
"Et perdràs pel camí
que no té mai tornada".

Sota la llum clement
del mati, a la casa
dels morts del meu vell nom,
dic avui: "Sóc encara".
M'adormiré demà
sense por ni recança.
I besarà l'or nou
la serenor del marbre.

Solitari, en la pau
del jardí dels cinc arbres,
he collit ja el meu temps,
la rara rosa blanca.
Cridat, ara entraré
en les fosques estances. 

Cançó del matí encalmat, Salvador Espriu i Castelló

Descansa en pau, estimat Rafa. Que la terra et sigui lleu.

FONT DE CANALETES, BARCELONA CELEBRATES BARÇA

The first day back after a vacation is always tough. Your mind is in another dimension, and your body resists getting back into the daily routine.  A good way to ease back in -both physically and mentally- is to do something you enjoy that isn't too demanding.

The Grandma loves building Lego sets and has a few waiting to be assembled, so she hasn't missed the chance to build one each day; it helps her regain her focus without putting any physical strain on herself.

Today, she has chosen a beautiful Lego set of the Font de Canaletes -a magical, historic spot that holds great emotional significance for all Culers, and has decided to share the building experience with the fantastic company of Claire Fontaine.

There are football stadiums where history is made. And there are places where history is celebrated.

In Barcelona, when Barça wins something important, thousands of people know instinctively where to go. Not to the stadium. Not to Plaça Sant Jaume. Not even to Plaça Catalunya. They go to a small nineteenth-century fountain at the beginning of La Rambla. The Font de Canaletes.

For anyone unfamiliar with Barcelona, the choice may seem rather strange. Canaletes is not monumental. It is not particularly large. You could walk past it without realising that you had just passed one of the most emotionally significant places in the geography of FC Barcelona.

But when Barça wins a league, a Champions League or another great title, everything changes. Flags appear. Scarves are raised. Songs begin. People climb onto anything that allows them to be seen above the crowd. And Canaletes becomes blaugrana. It has happened generation after generation. But why here?

To understand that, we need to return to a Barcelona without television, without radio commentary and, of course, without mobile phones. A Barcelona in which knowing the result of a football match could itself require a journey.

The present Font de Canaletes dates from 1892. Its name preserves a much older history. An eighteenth-century water deposit located beside Barcelona's old walls distributed water through small channels  -canaletes in Catalan- and both the fountain and this upper section of La Rambla eventually inherited the name. Made of cast iron, with four taps arranged around its base and a lantern rising above them, the fountain belongs to a type that can be found elsewhere in Barcelona.

Architecturally, therefore, Canaletes is modest.  Symbolically, it is enormous.

And before football entered its history, water had already given the fountain its first legend. Tradition says: Whoever drinks from Canaletes will return to Barcelona. It is Barcelona's version of throwing a coin into the Trevi Fountain.

Drink. Leave. And somehow the city will bring you back.

But during the early twentieth century another kind of ritual began to develop around Canaletes. This time it involved football.

Imagine being a Barça supporter in Barcelona more than a century ago. Your team is playing away. There is no television. There is no internet. There are no live scores arriving every few seconds on a screen in your pocket. How do you discover what happened? You wait for the news. And Canaletes became one of the places where that news arrived.

FC Barcelona traces the association between Barça and Canaletes back to 1909, when supporters began learning the team's results at the drinks kiosk beside the fountain. Football supporters gathered there. They discussed matches. They argued. They exchanged news. And, naturally, Barça and Espanyol supporters could engage in some lively football debates. Then the connection became even stronger.

During the 1920s, newspaper offices around La Rambla displayed football results on blackboards outside their buildings. Among them were Las Noticias and El Sol. People gathered to read the scores. And when the score announced a Barça victory, something beautifully simple happened. They celebrated immediately. The place where people had come to receive the news became the place where they celebrated the news. No committee decided it. No marketing department invented it. No one needed to declare Canaletes the official celebration point of FC Barcelona. The supporters simply made it theirs.

That transformation fascinates me. Today a football result reaches us instantly. A goal can be watched repeatedly within minutes. Messages cross continents in seconds. But in early twentieth-century Barcelona, information had a physical location. If you wanted the result, you went somewhere. And because you went somewhere, you met other people who wanted exactly the same thing. Football became communal before the celebration had even begun.

One person arrived. Then another. Someone knew something. Someone else had heard something different. A result appeared on the board. And suddenly strangers had a reason to embrace. Canaletes therefore became much more than a fountain. It became an early social network made of people.

And perhaps this tradition could only have developed on La Rambla. Barcelona has many great avenues, squares and boulevards. But La Rambla has always been something different. It is movement. People arrive and disappear. Residents mix with visitors. Newspaper sellers, florists, theatres, cafés, shops and pedestrians have shared the same urban corridor.

The Catalan writer Josep Pla captured something of this beautifully when writing about La Rambla in 1919: La Rambla is a marvel. It is one of the few streets in Barcelona where I feel completely at ease (El Quadern Gris).

He observed that there were enough people to encounter someone you knew and, at the same time, enough people to disappear into the crowd. That is almost the perfect description of Canaletes.

Individual and collective. Anonymous and familiar. Barcelona compressed into a few metres of pavement.

As FC Barcelona grew, so did the ritual. Victories became championships. Championships became nights of celebration. And generations of supporters repeated what previous generations had done. They went to Canaletes. The fountain gradually became inseparable from the emotional geography of the club. This is important because football clubs do not exist only inside stadiums. They occupy cities. Certain bars become meeting points. Certain streets become processional routes. Certain squares become places of triumph or disappointment. And sometimes an ordinary object acquires extraordinary meaning. For Barça, that object is a fountain.

Even the club's own historical records describe Canaletes as the traditional setting for popular blaugrana celebrations. During Barça's centenary, the club deliberately returned there to revive the old ritual, with players and representatives drinking from the fountain.

More than a century after the connection began, the tradition remains alive. When Barça secured the 2024/25 Liga title, supporters once again packed Canaletes and the surrounding streets. Different generations. Different players. The same fountain.

But perhaps calling Canaletes simply the place where Barça celebrates titles does not quite explain it. Because the tradition tells us something about the relationship between the club and Barcelona itself.

FC Barcelona was founded in 1899. The present Canaletes fountain had been installed only seven years earlier. They therefore grew old together. And during the twentieth century, Barça became much more than a sporting institution within Catalan society. Its colours became part of Barcelona's visual language. Its victories entered family memories. Matches became conversations between parents and children, grandparents and grandchildren. And Canaletes became one of the places where private emotion turned public. A football victory experienced at home could end several hours later among thousands of strangers on La Rambla. For one night, strangers were no longer entirely strangers. They were culers.

If objects could remember, imagine what Canaletes could tell us. It would remember supporters waiting anxiously for results they could not obtain anywhere else. It would remember newspapers and blackboards. It would remember arguments between Barça and Espanyol supporters. It would remember victories and disappointments.

Kubala. Cruyff. The Dream Team. Ronaldinho. Messi. The great European nights.

And it would also remember generations of supporters whose names never appeared in newspapers. People who simply loved their club. That may be the most beautiful thing about Canaletes. Football history is usually written around famous people.

Players. Coaches. Presidents.

But Canaletes belongs to the supporters. Its history was created from below. Literally from the street.

And then we return to the old legend. Drink from the fountain and you will return to Barcelona. Perhaps for Barça supporters the prophecy has acquired another meaning. You may leave Barcelona. You may travel. Players come and go. Teams change. Stadiums are rebuilt. Generations replace one another. But when the next great victory arrives, the city remembers where to meet. At the top of La Rambla. Around a small cast-iron fountain. Someone begins singing. A flag rises above the crowd. More people arrive from every direction. And Canaletes becomes blaugrana once again. Because some monuments are built intentionally. Others are created by memory.

And the Font de Canaletes became one of Barcelona's monuments not because of its size, but because generation after generation of people decided that this was where happiness should be shared.

Visca el Barça!  Visca Barcelona!  Visca Catalunya!

More information: Barcelona Born and Bred

 

Si beveu aigua de la font de Canaletes,
sempre més sereu uns enamorats de Barcelona, 
i per lluny que us n'aneu, 
tornareu sempre.

If you drink from the Font de Canaletes, 
you will forever be in love with Barcelona, 
and however far away you may go, 
you will always return.

Popular proverb