Description

The main event of the Festa dels Tres Tombs de Barcelona is a musical parade of animals – horses, donkeys and mules – in a cavalcade and pulling coaches around the city centre. Halfway round they pause in front of the Escola Pia de Sant Antoni, where the animals are blessed. It is a festival in the form of a procession, with a start and a finish, but it does not include the traditional tres tombs, the three tours of a holy site.

The cavalcade is held on the Saturday following the Feast of St Anthony. If the feast day falls on a Saturday, the cavalcade is postponed until the following week.

Reason

The Tres Tombs festival is held in honour of Sant Antoni Abat, or St Anthony the Abbot, the patron saint of animals, especially hoofed ones. Legend has it that if he saw one that was injured, he treated it. He did this with a piglet he found in Barcelona and, as a sign of gratitude, the piglet accompanied him ever after. That's why images of him often show the piglet at his side.

St Anthony, who lived between the 3^rd and 4^th centuries, died on 17^th January. So this day that was chosen to pay homage to him.

Origins

The Barcelona Tres Tombs cavalcade has been held from at least 1825, around the Portal de Sant Antoni Abat, which, over the course of time, became the neighbourhood now known as Sant Antoni.

For the first hundred years the cavalcade and animal blessing seemed perfectly natural events because horses and donkeys were a normal part of everyday life in the city. When they were no longer a common sight in Barcelona, the celebration was maintained as a tribute to the hoofed animals that, over the course of history, have been an economic and social driving force.