page_title: Traditions of Catalonia
section_title: Dance and music
hierarchical_section_title: Traditions of Catalonia / Dance and music
caption_attribution_description: Ceramic tile / people dancing Sardana
context_page_description: There are quite a number of festivals and traditions in Catalonia. While most are of ancient origin, certain traditions are of relatively recent introduction. There are also some that are common to the whole Catalan society, but others are relevant only to a particular location. Generally, locals welcome outsiders to share with them in their celebration.
context_section_description: Among the musical traditions, there is the very special music of the cobles, the wind bands that play sardanes. The sardana is a circular, open dance, that originated in the Empordà region (north of the country by the Mediterranean sea) and the Pyrenees (Catalan Pirineus), and is now danced in many squares and streets all over Catalonia.
  Popular folk songs include "El Rossinyol", "La Balanguera", "La Santa Espina", "Virolai" and "El Cant dels Ocells". Some of them became something like unofficial national anthems under the years of General Franco's dictatorship. Some of those songs became popular all over the world with the success of the Orfeó Català choir around the beginning of the 20th century. Another song, created by the present singer Lluís Llach, L'Estaca, also gained sudden recognition as expressing the national feeling of Catalans. Despite its relative recent introduction, singing l'Estaca became a kind of tradition.
  Another important Catalan musical tradition is the singing of Havaneres and burning rhum together at the Cremat which often happen simultaneously.
caption: The sardana is a circular.
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