The city is full of strongmen, opportunistic Spider-Men, zombies with plastic teeth, and adults who drag them along by the hand, completely used to it. None of these adults will be making a chestnut roast, because a chestnut roast, of course, needs a fireplace in a rural or semi-rural setting, just as Saint John's Day needs a rooftop terrace, at the very least. A chestnut roast doesn't even include particularly luxurious treats (pumpkin puree), and the associated sweets, panellets, were originally designed for the bitter cold and working in the fields. Stories by the fire? There's no Spotify like on New Year's Eve; no joy like on Saint John's Day; no bullyingEschatology and gratuitous violence, like with the Tió, our star festival. The emblem of the Castañada is the chestnut seller, a woman from another time, from when older women covered their hair with a scarf. I know there are still (women) who do it.
From those times when the terrifying chimneys of the farmhouses amplified the sound of the wind and sounded like the howls of the dead, from those times when rocking chairs served to move the bodies of chilled grandparents, from those times when the young men slept, me dressed, oblivious.
Tonight I want to be very, very bored, because it's been a long time since I've been. I want to talk by the fire with my friends, about this and that. Without music, without a special on TV, without being aware of anything, by candlelight. I want to drink rancid wine, I want to drink mulled wine (that wonderful thing that should be on every dessert wine list). I will greet with Pallaresa knives and a witch's outfit any children who dare to say "Should I call or try?"Let me be happy, bored, one night, without neon and with embers."
