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A land of dragons
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Saint George in
Catalonia A land of dragons |
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Catalonia is a land of dragons, a strong land, a land full
of caves, lakes and mountain ranges. There are many traditional tales based on dragons. It is said that a dragon hides under Banyoles lake, there is another one into a cave in Sant Llorenē del Munt, a third in the village of Montblanc and a fourth in " La cova del drac" in Mallorca.
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| In many villages in our country, hand made dragons and other terrible creatures play an important role in many festivities. They dance in front of people to remind us that even if they don’t bite they are still alive. It is also told that the Catalan landscape with so many mountains, seems to look like the figure of a dragon. Here, in this landscape, the farmer and knight George walked around . He printed his footsteps through all the geography of Catalan countries in many villages, mountains and summits. |
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Catalonia was one of the first countries in Europe to "picture" the fight of Saint George and the Dragon. |
| In the XI century, even before the
Crusades there’s a painting in a little village of Saint Serni de Nągol in Andorra
in which Saint George hurts the dragon with his sword. Even though Saint George was known by monks and knights he didn’t become popular until the end of Crusades. Catalan knights who had not taken part in the Crusades because they had enough fighting against "Saracans", also started to talk about Saint George as the Croats did in the Eastern lands. |
| Since then, Saint George has been the
symbol of all Catalonia, Mallorca, Valencia and Aragó which at that time were a whole
state. His image was in many coats of arms like the one of the famous Catalan troops called "Almogavers" who conquered lots of territories on the other side of the Mediterranean sea. |
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| A little later and thanks to the
king’s help, he was made the patron saint of Barcelona. For this reason, the city of
Barcelona, has on its coat of arms the red cross which is the Saint George symbol and its
festivity is one of the most important through the whole year. At the end of the XVth century the festivity of Saint George was made official by "La Generalitat" |
