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In these images in La Vanguardia Readers’ Photos we can enjoy the smile of La Candelaria, with a colored sky with lenticular high cumulus clouds over the Puig-agut sanctuary, in Manlleu, in the Osona region.
Candlemas on February 2 is an ideal date to forecast the weather and especially to try to know the cold days that remain. “Si la candelera riu, l’hivern és viu” (if the Candelaria laughs, winter is alive), the saying goes.
Lenticular clouds are called that because they are shaped like a lentil, as their name indicates, or there are also those who see them as a saucer or converging lens.
They are stationary and form mainly at high altitudes in mountainous areas and isolated from other clouds. Among mountaineers these clouds are considered a harbinger of a storm.
The Puig-agut sanctuary was the first temple of its kind in Spain to be dedicated to the Sacred Heart. Its construction was promoted at the end of the 19th century by Ramón Madirolas y Codina, an innovative farmer who promoted it from the Faro de Puig-agut magazine.
The direction of the work was carried out by the architect August Font y Carreras, who used a neo-Gothic style with some Romanesque and even neoclassical facets, inspired by the French basilica of Tarbes.
