This is how an Argentine writer sees the Catalans in the interior: "There is mysticism and something magical"

He arrived a bit by chance and a lot because of the work of his girlfriend, Guada, who “works” in Olesa. The Argentine Esteban Feune de Colombi (Buenos Aires, 1980) moved to El Bruc a few years ago. The couple rented a small house – “cabin, booth, ranch, barracks, masoveria or whatever he wants to call it” – at the foot of Montserrat. It is an isolated place, in the middle of the forest, which was cheap because it is still an annex to a hotel under construction. “When the works are finished we will have to leave.” But for now Esteban and Guada live at the foot of the magical mountain.

Magic really. The first thing that Feune de Colombi saw was the monument to the timbalier and he was soaked in the legend of him. But then he discovered other things, the energy of the mountain, the Moreneta, the UFOs, the asparagus… And with all that experience, Limbos terrestrials has written the chronicle of life in this town of 2,000 inhabitants, located just over half an hour from Barcelona, ​​which is brimming with stories and legends.

The best known legend of the place, which is perhaps history, is that of the famous drummer. His name was Isidre Lluçà and he single-handedly defeated the powerful French army without weapons or anything. He played his drum, the sound reverberated on the mountain and the enemy fled in terror, thinking that the Spanish troops were very numerous and invincible. “Many say around here that if instead of playing the drum, he had played his balls, we would now be French.”

But the criticism does not prevent Isidre’s victory from being celebrated year after year in El Bruc, whose inhabitants draw a thick veil over the fact that the hero of the War of Independence was actually from Sampedor. The commemoration “invariably takes place every June 8. The script never changes. Isidre, represented by a boy from the local school, goes down the mountain with his drum. Then the cavalry appears and then the battle is enacted. There are dialogues, always the same, and in the end the French die. As I am a foreigner, I do French. It is a format that has had a favorable response”.

This unexpected victory may have to do with the mysticism of the place, which comes from afar. “There are places that capture more energy than others and the mountain of Montserrat ends in an eye that is like a dragon.” It must have been like that in the year 900, when “some shepherds found Moreneta in a cave. There were lights and music. They summoned the rector of Olesa and saw her again three Saturdays in a row in the same place. Immovable by the weight of it, they built there, in that cave where the Christians kept it safe from the Muslim invasion, a chapel ”. “When you get in front you feel something. Even I, who want to apostatize, feel something. It’s interesting; it is black and it is not strange that ufologists see a connection”.

Yes, because the magic mountain is also a place for sighting flying saucers. “Curious and fanatics have gathered on an esplanade to see UFOs since 1980. They are the Friends of the Mysteries. And while, in Manresa, they celebrate the miracle of the Mysterious Llum: a sphere of fire went through the rose window of the Carmel church without breaking it, divided into three and came out again. It happened in 1345”.

“I see that mysterious light closer to a UFO than to the Holy Spirit, although I have never seen an alien ship, but the energy of this mountain does reach me, which changes its shape, color and appearance. It’s a protective mountain, and when I’m gone that’s what I’ll miss the most.”

That and the asparagus, which have something magical: “The magic of fresh and healing food that nature provides and we take to our stomachs. They come out sometimes near and sometimes far from the asparagus itself, a creeping mix of pinches. Suddenly three come out together, as a family, or just one tall and curly. They can be eaten not only in tortillas, as the vernacular custom indicates, but also sautéed for a while over high heat”, and they are so delicious that the foreigner has devoted an entire chapter of Limbos terrestrial to them.