My paternal grandparents, Ricardet and Antonieta, Valencians (from Castellón and Burriana) settled on Hospital Street, in Barcelona, once the war was over. My grandfather (Republican bugler, who was in a Francoist concentration camp and returned home unrecognized by his wife, as he always used to say) worked in a factory on Wellington Street, which he pronounced "Bellinton," with the accent on the "e." But he and she, my grandparents, had two complementary jobs that fascinated me every time I went to their apartment on Hospital Street. They were nativity scene makers for the Santa Llúcia fair and made palm fronds for Palm Sunday fair.
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This means there was a small room where my grandfather had dozens of caganers next to dozens of Virgin Marys, which he painted. He made trees with olive trunks and dry moss (the dry moss was the canopy). There were cork caves, there were chickens. We, my brothers and I, played with the figurines all day. My grandmother, of course, when it was almost time to bless the palm, spent the day sewing them. We helped her make worms. It was about tying, like someone making a basket, the palm leaves, to make those Gaudí-esque snails that adorn them. I, then, preferred the palmón (the boys' palm) to the palma, the girls' palm, although the palma (my grandmother made me a beautiful palm, like a float) had all kinds of candies hanging from it, always prettier than good.
Now I can't help it. I adore nativity scenes and I like to stroll through the Santa Llúcia fair or the Sagrada Familia fair. I look at the stalls, with chickens bigger than fishermen, washerwomen, the nativity scene (which contains a Saint Joseph, a Virgin Mary, a baby Jesus, the ox and the mule) and of course, this unique joke in the world, which is the caganer. I see my grandfather painting barretinas with little skill. I see the stall. I remember the place where it was (each stall had a number). The neighboring stallholders who greeted my brothers and me and gave us some coveted figurine, for not being essential, like the haystack and the three chickens climbing the ladder. That gentleman from the next stall who had water mills that worked with a motor. The annunciata, which had an orange light that simulated the shepherds' bonfire. The little pig, which I still have on the table where I write this, dying of nostalgia.