Arcadia Spain

October 31^st is a well-known date in many different countries. It’s widely known that one of the most popular celebrations –Halloween– takes place on this day. However, there are other celebrations around the world that take place on this date. For example, there’s a tradition in Catalonia that we love to celebrate these days: La Castanyada!

La Castanyada is a popular Catalan celebration that takes place on the 31^st of October and the 1^st of November. Like Halloween, it began as a funerary ritual many centuries ago. Nowadays, it is a day to celebrate the fall season and also to remember our friends and relatives who passed away. In Catalonia many people celebrate it by getting together with family or friends and eating roasted chestnuts, sweet potatoes, candied fruit and panellets (a kind of marzipan), usually accompanied by moscatell (a sweet wine). Today we had some panellets and some roasted chestnuts at Arcadia, so good!

One of the key characters in this tradition is La castanyera. La castanyera is a Catalan character that is getting harder to see: an old lady, originally with a kerchief covering her head, who sells toasted chestnuts wrapped in newspaper. Nowadays there are less castanyeres who keep doing this tradition, but it’s still easy to find some stands.

Try to find one and get some warm chestnuts!