Festa major de Sant Antoni

Activity dates

Dates de celebració

Mid-January in the Eixample district neighbourhood of Sant Antoni

Feast Day: 17 January, Sant Antoni Abat

2020: From 17 to 26 of January.

ACCESS TO THE OFFICIAL WEBSITE OF SANT ANTONI 2020.

Eixample

Sant Antoni owes its name to an old gateway in the city wall, the Portal de Sant Antoni, which was the main entrance to Barcelona from the Middle Ages on. The neighbourhood started to develop in the middle of the 19th century, after the wall was knocked down and especially after the iron market was built in 1882. This integrated it, in an urban sense, into the Cerdà Plan and made it part of the expansion district, the Eixample.

Its festa major, held in honour of Sant Antoni (St Anthony), marks the start of the city's celebration calendar. Apart from the traditional features of a Barcelona festival – the despertada, cercavila de gegants, correfoc – it also has some distinctive traits that link it with the Sant Antoni celebrations round the country. The Tres Tombs cavalcade and the rifa del porquet, revived a few years ago, are good examples.

Reason

Sant Antoni Abat has strong roots in Catalan-speaking lands, as the large number of celebrations in his honour show. In the case of the Sant Antoni neighbourhood, the festival name comes from an old church there used to be in the Raval neighbourhood, where there is now a street with the same name, Carrer de Sant Antoni Abat. It was right by the medieval wall and the big gateway next to it. That led to the gateway being called after the saint and, by extension, the area beyond the wall where the neighbourhood was later built.

About festivities

Highlights

Rifa del porc. A few years ago local traders revived the old tradition of a draw for the Feast of St Anthony. At the start of the 19th century it was common to raffle a piglet to fatten it up during the year. St Anthony's relationship with pigs comes from religious iconography. As he is the patron saint of animals, he is usually portrayed in the company of a young pig. Today, though, the old prize has been replaced by a hamper of meat products. 

Tres Tombs. As in many other towns round Catalonia, the Tres Tombs cavalcade is held for Sant Antoni. Because it is a city event, instead of tres tombs (three laps) round a particular site, the parade goes through the streets in the centre of the neighbourhood to Plaça de Sant Jaume. Horsemen and women take part in it, along with all kinds of municipally owned carriages. 

Festival morning. The neighbourhood's trabucaires and grallers get local residents up bright and early, with their music and gun salvoes announcing the arrival of the big festival day. Around midmorning the Sant Antoni folk groups, with their festival figures, start to assemble for the midday cercavila. Gegants, bestiari, diables, trabucaires and musical animation groups all take part in the procession.

Correfoc. On the last day of the festa major the Diables de Sant Antoni organise a correfoc, in which the fire-totting devils dance their way round the streets in the centre of the neighbourhood. Another participant is Porca, a fire beast that represents the pig that went everywhere with Sant Antoni. 

Interesting features

Interesting features

Sant Antoni's seguici consists of Tonet and Rita, the neighbourhood's gegants ;  Sisquet, Rosa, Mingu and Amador, the market's gegants de motxilla , and Cisco, Pineta, Tano and Estiveta, the capgrossos  belonging to the residents' association and the giant family of the Colònies Jordi Turull. Other participants include Porca, the Castellers del Poble-sec, the Trabucs de Sant Antoni and the Colla de Xamfrà.

Supplementary information