Before the jackdaws raise their festive song again, the square fills with a silence that doesn't appear on any festival program. Conversations fade, children tiptoe to catch every detail, and all eyes converge on a single figure. Slowly, a powerful eagle advances through the procession. Its neck bends with ancient precision; its wings, motionless, seem to still hold the impulse of flight. Each step is deliberate, each gesture breathes a solemnity that time has not managed to erode.When the dance begins, the square changes its rhythm. The drums give way to restrained music, the bows draw a language that crosses centuries and, for a few moments, the celebration abandons the clamor to become an act of honor. The eagle dances with the majesty of one who represents something much older than herself.There are few figures in Catalan popular culture capable of arousing similar emotion. For more than six hundred years, the eagle has traversed the streets of towns and cities, leading processions, opening festive parades and greeting authorities with the same serene nobility. Since the late Middle Ages, it has embodied the dignity of the city, the memory of the community and respect for its institutions. When it advances amidst music and silence, it is not just a crowned bird crossing the square. It is an entire town that recognizes itself in its gestures and that, year after year, continues to find in that dance a way to celebrate its own history.The bird that could caress the SunBefore becoming the most solemn figure in Catalan processions, the eagle already soared through the imagination of great ancient civilizations. Its flight, higher than that of any other bird, awoke a fascination that would span centuries. It seemed to approach the Sun to where the human gaze could not reach, and it became a symbol of strength, power, and incessant renewal. Greeks and Romans made it an emblem of strength and authority. Over time, medieval tradition would expand this symbolism by attributing an exceptional quality to it: the ability to hold its gaze before the light of the Sun without faltering. Legends went even further. They explained that when their feathers aged, the eagle would soar up to the sun's rays for the fire to consume them. Then it would descend to a spring of pure water to submerge itself, emerging with new and shiny plumage. That cycle of fire and water turned it into a powerful metaphor for the Renaissance, an image that would take root deeply in the medieval imagination.

The night falls slowly on the horizon. The sea breathes with that calm that only peoples accustomed to living before the maritime immensity know. By the water's edge, conversations subside as a guitar begins to play the first chords, full of memories and longing. Someone hums a familiar melody. Voices join in almost without realizing it. For a few moments, time seems to slow down under the weight of each verse. The murmur of the sea accompanies the memory of people who crossed the Atlantic pursuing a better life. It is also the nostalgia of those who left their land behind and of those who, after many years, returned home carrying within them another light and another way of understanding the world. From that intense relationship between Catalonia and Cuba, one of the most enduring cultural imaginaries of our tradition would eventually emerge: that of the Habaneras.When the horizon led to America

During the 18th and 19th centuries, Cuba became one of the main destinations for Catalan emigration. Many young people embarked for the Caribbean with the hope of prospering in a land that, from a distance, seemed to offer infinite opportunities. Some made their fortunes there; others simply sought to make their dreams come true. Amidst sugar plantations, commercial warehouses, and ports, an intense relationship began to be woven between the two shores of the Atlantic.The Catalan presence on the island was so significant that commercial, family, and cultural ties ended up shaping an authentic Atlantic network. Cuba became a familiar space within the Catalan imagination, almost an exotic extension of the homeland itself. But that relationship would also be marked by the contradictions of the colonial system, by the wars of independence, and by the tensions of a world that was beginning to transform.That transatlantic adventure, so present in the Catalan imagination, cannot be separated from the colonial context in which it took place. A good part of the prosperity that some "indians" achieved in Cuba was linked to an economy sustained by the structures of the empire and by the plantations that fueled Atlantic trade. Havaneres do not explicitly explain this reality, but they also form part of this same historical universe. Behind the nostalgia emanating from these melodies, the contradictions of a past that today invites a more complex look also resonate.For decades, ships connected the two shores with a constant flow of people and hopes. On deck, many watched as the Catalan coast slowly faded on the horizon, not knowing if they would ever see it again. Some never returned. Others did years later, carrying within them the imprint of two lands.When in 1898 the Spanish empire lost its last American colonies, many Catalans undertook the journey back. Soldiers, merchants, sailors, and 'indians' were returning. With them traveled memories, objects, words, and experiences that would continue to feed the ties between Catalonia and Cuba.

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The irreverent Albert Pla and Peyu are the protagonists of the third issue of the quarterly paper magazine The Promotion, which publishes the El Foment Cultural Foundation for the entire Catalan-speaking world, and which ARA readers in the Girona region will find included free with the newspaper this Sunday, October 12. It consists of 116 pages of Catalan culture, gastronomy, and language in a magazine whose aim is to be a "national tool," in the words of its director, Andreu Mas. The magazine insert for the second consecutive quarter is part of a collaboration agreement between the ARA and The Promotion to "strengthen and promote Catalan culture, language, and gastronomy," according to Candi Granés, the founder and president of the Girona-based organization based in the Barri Vell neighborhood.

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Anyone living or visiting the Girona region this weekend who goes to the newsstand to buy the newspaper this Sunday, July 20th, will find a very special gift. Together with ARA, they will receive the second edition of the magazine for free. The Promotion, 116 pages of Catalan culture, language, and gastronomy. This is a publication edited in Girona by the El Foment Cultural Foundation, which has its base of operations with different spaces in the heart of the Barri Vell, but which wants to go much further and be a "tool to reconnect the entire Catalan linguistic sphere", in the words of the director, Andreu Mas.

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