Freedom for Catalonia?

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Dear Max and Dominic,

The last two days have been very interesting in Barcelona. They started off in an ordinary sort of way and we visited a few different parts of the city where one of its most famous people from the past, a man called Gaudi, had made beautiful and strange buildings. He designed the new cathedral you saw in the last blog. His buildings look as if things from nature - such as trees, waves, even animals - got turned into stone by a magician so that people could enjoy them forever. You can see a picture of one of the apartment buildings he designed. I wonder what it would be like to live in one of the hosues inside?

Tuesday was a special holiday for Barcelona and all the surrounding countryside - a little bit like Waitangi Day. One of the main streets here, called La Rambla, was full of people carrying the flag of Catalonia, which is the name of this region. Everyone was enjoying the holiday.

Later in the day, we noticed everyone was gathering in one part of the city so we went to have a look. There was a HUGE march because many of the people that live here that want Catalonia to become a separate country and stop being part of Spain. It is a bit like the South Island deciding to be a separate country and not part of New Zealand any more. Everyone was singing, dancing, shouting out and waving flags. There were more than 1 million people in the march, maybe even more than one and a half million. That's many more than all the people that live in the South Island put together. After a while we managed to get out of the crowd and go and have dinner, but when we came back after tea, the march was still going because it was so long.

Today we did another interesting thing. We travelled to a very special mountain called "Montserrat". Can you see how the top is all jagged, as if it was cut with a knife? That's what "serrated" means, so "Montserrat" means "the serrated mountain". Half way up the mountain is a monastery where monks live to look after a very special statue of the Mary, the Mother of Jesus. It is a beautiful place. Many people in Catalonia believe that this statue is a sign that Mary looks after them and lots of people make a special trip here to pray to her to ask God to look after them. People have been coming here for to pray to Mary and Jesus for about 1300 years (that's longer than any people, even the Maori people, have lived in New Zealand!). The tall cliffs have got many ancient caves where holy men and women lived and prayed, and many little churches cling to the mountain with small tracks going between them. Justin and I went into the main church and had a look at the statue, called the Black Madonna. It was humbling to think about the countless people that had gone to look at her before we did. I wonder if you will ever see her?

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Comments

[anonymous]

Hi Matthew Thanks you so much for allowing us to share in your experiences and your conversations with your children. Your stories are informative and inspiring. Thanks again Christine