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Barcelona tips, Special Dates

This week we celebrate the Revetlla de Sant Joan

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This week, due to the celebration of San Juan, we will only have 2 language exchanges, Wednesday at Soda Bus and Mojito Night on Saturday at the Jardinet de Gràcia.

But, what is it celebrated in the Revetlla de Sant Joan?

It is a magical night that celebrates the summer solstice, the shortest night of the year (June 23-24).
It is popularly known as the Night of Fire or the Night of the Witches, it is celebrated in all the Catalan lands, as well as in different parts of the world.
The origin of the celebration of the Night of Sant Joan is pagan. With a tradition that goes back long before Christianity, it is a cult of the sun and the lengthening of the day, due to the summer solstice. It is a festival with very marked and symbolic elements and customs: the purifying fire, the midnight baths, the herbs of San Juan, the songs, the dance or the cures and more magical rituals. Currently it is a celebration that the Catholic Church makes coincide with the date of birth of Saint John the Baptist.
Bonfires are the central element of the Night of Sant Joan in the Catalan lands. Pyrotechnics have a prominent place in the celebrations. Gastronomically, family gatherings are usually accompanied with coca de Sant Joan, coca de recapte or coca de llardons (pork rinds).
Is this holiday celebrated in your country? What is it’s name? How it is celebrated? Share your culture with us either in the weekly Language Exchanges in bars, at the Sailing & Language Exchange that we do during the summer, at the Paella & Language Exchange on Saturday July 2nd or at the Brunch & Language Exchange on July 24th. And if you want to see your story published, you can send it to us at info@speakquick.es
Best,
Aina
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Barcelona tips, Special Dates
Christmas is coming and the anxiety for the chase of gifts grows.
Don’t worry, Barcelona offers you the solution.

As every year, Santa Lucia’s Christmas market will open its doors and you will find curious and unique ideas for your gifts.

The market, with 232 years of life, is a mandatory place to feel the typical Catalan Christmas atmosphere, with its handcrafted decorations, jewelery and handmade accessories.
It is common for the inhabitants of Barcelona to buy figures for the nativity scene and nougats for their Christmas festivities.
This year the market will start on November 30th and will end on December 23th and as always will be on the Avinguda de la Catedral, to fill your Christmas with magic.
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Special Dates, Uncategorized
On March 8, 1908, in New York textile workers of New York Cotton factory were on strike to demand improvements in their working conditions. In commemoration of this date, the socialist groups achieved this date was declared as the International Women’s Day.
Undoubtedly, society and women’s evolution within it is a fact. Todays post is written by four women, very different from each other, but united by something more powerful than discrimination, sexism and inequality: love.
Daniela Piovezan @piove_dani
I grew up in a bubble of machism disguised, in which the woman must be nurtured and protected as a valuable asset that can not mancillarse, physically or morally. In a society full of protocols and scripts. An ornate, padded and safe cage. I do not complain. I’m not complaining because what they taught me, was nothing more than what was taught and is not the time to blame.
It is time to learn from the past, face fears, go ahead, creating a new story and new lessons.It’s time to celebrate. We celebrate the achievements. The conquests of many women who entered our history, fill me with admiration for her example of struggle, resistance and improvement.
Daily battles each and every one of us to have a full life. We celebrate the driving force behind the fight for the same privileges, and why not, also the duties.
We celebrate equality. Equal importance, not of essence. Equal opportunities and rights. We celebrate differences.
The differences that complement and build. The differences that show the beauty of the nuances. We celebrate freedom. Free to go, do or be what you want. The freedom to have children or not. Combing hair, applying makeup, shaving, grooming … or not. Seduce and be seduced. Go alone or accompanied. Showing your knees, cheeks or chest. Playing football, billiards and chess. You may like pink, blue or yellow, without distinction, nor because one color or another means anything.
Let’s celebrate which each can provide as a human being, with their genes, personalities and stories.
DSO   @dsowriter
I am very pleased that women unite for causes that we support throughout. What hurts, often, is that we seem to competitors, more than friends. Surely, retrograde education, is much to blame for this. But it is as it is, even if I don’t understand, nor I will ever understand, but unity among us, does not always mean power.

It’s something that hurts me, but I fight every day to make this change. We stigmas in our skin that cause us pain without being able to understand why. But the reality is only one, throughout this struggle for hundreds of years, against the injustices of a society in which the woman was more than subdued by the pressure without human reason, we drown in such a way that I think even today … It remains a problem.

We fight, we go to the streets, something that was unthinkable. We speak and say what we think, without feeling fear in our bodies to be nullified or even mistreated. Life is not always fair. With hand on heart, consistent of what I say, man, talking male, has not been fair to women. We were a lower “category”, our voice, our desires and what we really needed was not taken into consideration. Creating a dent in our lives and thinking, I had to really be.

But what I said, women have to unite without any separatism, support for good and bad, although we are not complement agree. Undoubtedly, the saying ” Unity is Strength” , should be our doctrine, to put a pair of ovaries to any character who wants to belittle us, just for the condition of being a woman.

We are free women, struggling with the ideas of an independent life created by our own choices, without an inculpatory hand pointing at what “we must do.”

Today I want to toast.

Let’s toast with a good Cosmopolitan:

Here’s to all single mothers.

Here’s to those business women who give up so much, just because of being a woman.

Here’s to each woman who without fear has escaped the bastard who raised his hand against them.

Here’s to all those who come out to the streets on March 8 defending our rights.

Here’s to women who made patience a virtue.

Thank you all for being women.

Ivonne Tarraco  @iua_tc
To all warriors
I have one day, but it is worth  it. I took to the streets without fear, convinced of what I do and why I’m here. I owe it to them, my mother, my grandmother, all the women who I did not have the pleasure of meeting, and opened my pace and marked the way to go. I carry my own open fronts and deal my own battles, but today I feel I am able to stop an entire country. I move on with my strategy and I expect a large number of troops. We are flagged by the same goals and our hymn has led us here. They may try to discourage me and desautorizarme, or call into question my intentions and my abilities, you may question my judgment or simply do not take into consideration but will continue there, at the foot of the canyon. I will move forward with firm and decisive step, gaining ground on merit, seeking new allies every day until I forget why I was here today. I hope to leave behind lost causes and be able to muster the courage to sacrifice myself for all those for who is worth fighting. I know it will not be easy, perhaps the idea to abandon will tempt me, but I am also thinking of future generations, we have to entrench present. So I’ll stock up with my owns and the borrowed, the innate and the acquired, I will have all the resources at my disposal and a time not always prove to be necessary in order to achieve, at last, the long-awaited victory. And if in the worst case, I fall or I am hurt, I know I have the support of countless helping hands that will shield my heart the courage to get back on my feet. Recognizing me imperfect and vulnerable, weathered by the ravages of life and coached them from illusion and honestly, I acknowledge what my demands are, because it is these and not others, and I have no intention of changing them:

I claim a place in the world, my place, ours.

I claim worthy, equal and fair wages.

I claim shared hours and minutes alone.

I claim them the same opportunities.

I claim freedom, equality and justice.

I claim the right to decide and to get excited, to learn and to be wrong, to fight and to give up, to succeed and to fail.

I claim humanity over any gender.

I claim love in all its forms and expressions.

I claim respect and my own life.

I claim the power to be myself.

Lara de Mena  @laradmena 

Writting about women’s day, quickly leads me to think about the struggle for equality with men, wage inequality, gender violence and many battles, we must not give up. All this is true, we still live in tow of many evils in our society, giving my full support today who will take to the streets to claim it. But in my humble desk, I want my words go dedicated to highlight to bring to light all that we know and sometimes we miss…
Woman, everyone knows their morphological meaning, but what about the hidden meaning?Woman is synonymous with passion, emotion, courage, strength, dignity, courage, intelligence, emotional strength, empathy and suffering (yes, we suffer and sometimes a lot, but because we have the ability to feel).
There is a word that encompasses the feelings of a woman, it is love. Love for what we do, love for how we do it, love for who surrounds us. Her beauty, her friends, her loneliness, her independence, her frailty, her leadership, her simplicity, at the end of the day, what is the most important?
I am a single woman, without ever having gone through the altar, I have not experienced the birth of a child, nor I’ve gotten a managerial position. However, all this, I live with the joy of knowing that I am surrounded by love. With the need to share and share, so, today, March 8, I will raise with the sole goal, to thank all those beautiful women who are part of my life, to love and admire you. You are worth it and you know it!
THANK YOU!
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