La Castañada (La châtaigne)
On the 1st of November – the All Saints’ Day – in Catalonia we celebrate La Castanyada. This tradition consists in eating roasted chestnuts, roasted sweet potatoes and ‘panellets’, a typical catalan sweet consisting in little balls made of marzipan and pine nuts, usually combined with muscatel, a sweet wine.
The roasted chestnuts and sweet potatoes are sold all around in street corner stalls from the beginning of October. The point is to eat something warm as the weather turns colder.
You can’t miss them!
History:
The origins of the Castañada tradition date back to the end of the XVIII century when the bell-ringers, since they had to ring all the bells during All Saints’ Eve, used to feed themselves with chestnuts, sweet potatoes and panellets in order to maintain strength and energy.