St Jordi and the Dragon

The bull — that passionate, earthy archetype of fertility and death — may be the totem beast of Spain, but he has little place in Barcelona. No, the creature the Catalans hold to their hearts is more fiery, more dangerous.

Ever since 1229, when Count-King Jaume I had a vision of St George (Jordi) lending a hand at the siege of Mallorca, the most chivalric of saints has been the patron of Catalonia, and his encounter with the dragon, which according to the old legends took place in Syria, was transported to Montblanc near Tarragona. In 1285, Count-King Pere III climbed up the Catalans’ sacred mountain, Canigou (now in the French Roussillon), and the chronicles say he found a dragon up there, too.

The legend of Jordi and his dragon was seamlessly grafted on to Catalunya’s favourite 9th-century dragon saga. It seems that the Moors, realizing they couldn’t defeat the counts of Barcelona, decided to play dirty and brought a baby dragon over from North Africa and set it loose. When it began to grow fat on the surrounding peasants, the father of Guifré the Hairy had the Christian derring-do to slay it at last.