Express News Service
While walking through the labyrinthine streets of the Gothic Quarters in old Barcelona—flanked by buildings converted into cafes and balconies overflowing with ferns and flowers—one comes across a group of tourists having a hearty laugh at the sight of a man mannequin with his pants down pooping merely. They are at a shop in Barri Gòtic, which sells souvenirs that are equally quaint and hilarious—squatting figures in all shapes and sizes, pooping away to glory.
This part of Barcelona encompasses the remains of many medieval landmark structures and a part of the city’s Roman wall. Most of the area dates back to the late 19th and early 20th centuries and not to medieval times as the name suggests because of the major restoration it underwent for the 1929 Barcelona International Exposition. The streets now have shops, cafes and hostel apartments.
The mannequin is of the ‘pooping farmer’ or ‘El Caganer’. Traditionally represented as a squatting farmer wearing the red Catalan hat called ‘Barretina’, a red girdle and black pants pulled down to the knees with a poop pile under his bare bottom, this crapping farmer figurine is an important part of the nativity scene during Christmas in the Catalan culture. Joanna Arboix, who manages the Caganer shop, says, “The pooping farmer symbolises fertility and abundance. The defecated waste disintegrates and mixes with soil, thus increasing its fertility, which in turn, gives abundant crops in the coming year.”
Having said that, the figurine of the pooping farmer is not why curious tourists venturing into the shop break out into an amused guffaw. It is the celebrities’ Caganer, instead. The shelves are full of comic characters, world leaders, sports personalities and Hollywood celebrities—from Barack Obama to Messi and Ronaldo, Madonna, Santa Claus to British and Spanish Royalty—all tending to their ‘business’.
While the farmer is a traditional motif, the idea to represent celebrities as Caganer is the brainchild of Alòs-Pla family. Based in Costa Brava, Spain, the family has been handcrafting each piece since 1992 with an aim to promote the Catalan tradition and de-personalise the Christmas figure. The owner Marc Alòs says, “We hope to inspire people to gift Caganer to their loved ones as a good luck charm all year round and not just during Christmas.”
Indeed, celebrities and political leaders feel honoured and not offended by the representation, as is visible in the photos lining the walls of the shop. In fact, Tribuna, a blogging platform of the global football community, posted about Danish football player Martin Braithwaite, who captioned one of his Instagram stories, “Till I have my own Caganer, I will take ‘avi del Barca’ (a cartoon character representing the culture of Barcelona football club).”
Making these figurines is a laborious undertaking. First, the artisan handcrafts the original figurine with details of the face and clothes of each celebrity and makes a double-sided plaster cast mould for it. Each figurine requires a different mould to make more numbers of figurines. A clay ball is put in a mould, which is then carefully hand-pressed to give it shape. The resulting figurine goes through brushing to remove extra clay burrs and filing and sponging for sharper edges. After the baking of the figurines, they’re hand-painted with emulsion, before packing and selling.
The Catalan pooping farmer is not alone. Similar figures are also found in other cultures. Figurine of Father Colic ‘Père la Colique’ in France dates back to around 1930-1940, while Murcia, south of Valencia, Spain, has ‘cagone’. Naples has the ‘cacone’ or Pastor che caca and in Portugal, it is called ‘cagoe’.
Come Christmas and Spain would again have a Caganer pooping somewhere in Nativity scene since Catalans do believe in ‘menja bé, caga fort I no tinguis por a la mort’—eat well, shit heartily and don’t be afraid of death.
