Photo Essay: Barcelona’s Christmas Lights… Bon Nadal i Bones Festes!

Nadal, Abstracte #23 (Fountain), Passeig de Gràcia i Gran Via de les Corts, Barcelona, 2025

Caga tió
avellanes i torrons
si no vols cagar et donaré un cop de bastó…!

–One version of a Catalan Christmas song/chant the kids use to persuade the “tió” to give up its Christmas gifts

Along with presenting a collection of Christmas light abstracts, I thought I might provide a brief educational service as well.

To wit: the two Catalan Christmas traditions that tend to cause visitors to bat an eye or three… the tió de Nadal and the Caganer figure, along with a short comment about the language.

So, what is the “tió”?

First, I need to clarify that this word is NOT the Spanish word for “uncle”–that would be tío, accent at the beginning of the word. This Catalan word, tió, has the accent at the end of the word and refers to a traditional Christmas pine log. (Try saying “tee-OH”.)

This log usually sits up on two or four “feet” made of sticks and has a happy face painted on the flat surface of one end. On its “head” sits the traditional Catalan red cap, or barretina.

During the days leading up to Christmas, the kids keep the tió warm with a blanket and they feed it treats. This is to ensure that, on Christmas Day, the tió will be able to poop out (shit!) a generous number of presents.

On Christmas Day, the kids basically whack the tio with a stick and ask it to poop out presents whilst reciting a song or chant that might go something like this:

“Poop, log…

Hazelnuts and nougat candies…

And if you don’t I will give you a hit with a stick!”

(This is a rough translation of the captivating rhyme in Catalan that opened this blog.)

Parents, meanwhile, will surreptiously slide a present under tió‘s blanket for the kids to find once they finish beating the log.

For the tykes, it is barrels of squeals, laughs and fun!

So, what is a “Caganer”?

Continuing with this Catalan fixation with excrement (what’s with that, anyway?)… we have the Caganer figure. You pronounce this as “ka-gah-NAY”, by the way, accent at the end of the word.

Traditionally, it is a small figurine of a peasant squatting down, pants down around his ankles, and squeezing out a deuce onto the ground. So, you say you are shocked and apalled! So was my mother.

Even worse… this “shitter” is almost universally placed somewhere in the background in nativity scenes. How about them road apples!

So what is the significance, apart from giving the kids more opportunity for further guffaws? Well, there are theories… the fertilizing of the Earth, as a contrast to the divine, a humbling reminder of our humanity, and so on. See the link to the Wikipedia article to explore further.

Nowadays, you will find shops here and there around Catalunya that sell these Caganer figures–and they are not all representations of the traditional Catalan peasant. You can now buy Caganers depicting famous historical figures, politicians, actors, sports heroes, and so on–yes, you can even get a Messi or a Trump Caganer.

One last note on language

And just in case you were wondering, Catalan is indeed a language of its own, not simply a dialect of Spanish. It is classified as yet another of the Romance (that is, Roman) languages derived from Latin (mixing with the old local tongues) such as French, Castellano (Spanish), Portuguese, Romanian, Italian, et al. Somewhere around 9 to 10 million people speak it, not only in Spain but also in Andorra, southern France, a small part of Sardinia, and the Balearic Islands, making it the 9th most spoken language in the European Union.

Barcelona Christmas Lights–Where?

Just about anywhere you go in downtown Barcelona, you will find them. The epicenter is probably Plaça de Catalunya, but concentrations of lights can also be found along Carrer Balmes, Carrer de Pelai, Gran Via de les Corts Catalanes, Carrer d’Aragó, Avinguda Diagonal, Passeig de Gràcia, L’Avinguda del Portal de l’Àngel, the Gothic Quarter, Les Rambles, the Port and Barceloneta, as well as in the central areas of the many surrounding barrios.

The Images

I used the Nikon D850 camera and the 70-200mm f/4 Nikkor telephoto lens… along with some creative and deliberately nervous movements. It took a bit of practice and many erased images to finally get what I felt were the best effects. In post (Adobe Photoshop Elements), I mostly did a bit of cropping, darkened the blacks, and slightly enhanced the contrast and saturation, spending maybe five minutes on each photograph.