La Castanyera

Victor Galisteo and Sergi Aymamí.
One of the most typical traditions of the All Saints is the Castanyera. The chestnut is one of the most excellent autumn’s products. Until a few years ago, the chestnut-girl (castanyera) was a typical character who you could find selling chestnuts in small shops on the streets of our villages from All Saints up to Christmas. Now a days, even though it’s not that easy to find chestnut-girls, in the All Saints time, you can find some little shops of chestnuts in several points of the city, many of them carried out by young people, specially students, who find in this activity the possibility of earning a little bit of money. Other then chestnuts, there are 2 typical plates special from these holidays: the panellets and the candied fruit. The origin of panellets is slightly clear. They say that they come from formal funeral banquets, where the people bring the panellets to the church in baskets and they eat them inside the church.
In some parts of Catalonia, they used to celebrate a meal after the death of some relative. The table was prepared on a special way, the distribution of the retainers and the eaten ones that were giving each other. For the candied fruit, depends on the season we are, even nowadays, it’s more often to find fruits out of season.