Sunday, March 3, 2013

Un cap de setmana de diversió a Catalunya (A weekend of fun in Catalonia)

First weekend of February I had the opportunity to participate in the Liga Catalana, the Ultimate Frisbee league in the autonomous community of Catalonia. Interestingly, Catalonia is much like Quebec in that a good portion of its population is independentist. Its capital is Barcelona and, along with Spanish, its official language is Catalan.

Foto credit to Wikipedia.



Fellow guiri and Dulcinea, Chelsi, often participates in their league and decided to organise a women's team to enter in one of the Liga Catalana's weekend savage tournaments. Beach Ultimate is played 5 against 5, and savage means that there are no substitute players, always the same 5 on the field throughout the whole game.  It was my first savage tournament and was a ton of fun.

Photo credit to the Liga Catalana.





Our team was composed of three Quijotes players (Chelsi, Rosa and I) and two players from Catalonia (Anna and Esti). A rather haphazard team, we were the self-proclaimed Arreplegades, which, as I understand it, means 'the pick ups' in Catalan.






The tournament was on the Sunday and took place on Castelldefels beach, south of Barcelona. We left Madrid the Friday prior and returned Sunday evening. In an attempt to keep things cheap I was lucky enough to stay with an Arreplegades and Quijotes team-mate, Rosa. A native Catalonian, Rosa is from Centelles, a town north of Barcelona. Their annual Carnaval festivities were taking place while I was there (pictured left). Throughout my stay in Centelles I was exposed to a lot of Catalan, either chatting with Rosa's family or friends. I found the language to be a mix of French and Spanish and although I couldn't understand everything I was able to understand the general topic of conversation.




Talking with Rosa's family, who are pro-separatism, gave me a perspective on the province of Catalonia I had never been exposed to before. Being from Quebec, the controversy of separatism is not a foreign concept to me. However, being non-separatist myself, it was really interesting to listen to their thoughts and ideas about the topic.


The name of the tournament was Campi Qui Pugui, which translates to Every Man for Himself.
Never having played together, the Arreplegades went in with no expectations. Despite that and an extremely breezy day (pictured right) we ended up making it to the finals, winning all of our games in pool-play. Once in the finals we unfortunately got killed... don't remember the score, probably because I've blocked it from my memory... An awesome day of savage play nonetheless! After the long day of playing we hopped in the car all sweaty and sandy and made the 6-hour drive back to Madrid.

Photo credit to the Liga Catalana.

The Liga wrote up a summary of the tournament, for anyone who can read Catalan... if you're missing that skill set you can simply check out some photos from the tournament. 





2 comments:

  1. Awesome, love the pics! What were the temps like that weekend?

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  2. Wasn't warm...wind didn't help with that!

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