There are no more dances in the tent

With the arrival of summer, sooner or later towns end up celebrating their local festival. With varying budgets and varying success, each festival committee strives to organize a series of events, combining tradition and innovation, to create a splendid celebration. Those of us of a certain age remember the canopies that were set up to hold the dances.

In towns that didn't have a large function room, the marquee served as a temporary dance hall during the local festival. Boxes were rented, and residents had to pay admission to attend the events held there. In the final years of the dictatorship, the one in Plaça del Sol in Gràcia, where singer-songwriters of the nova cançó (New Song) performed, became particularly famous. Raimon's 1975 concert, with a dying Franco, was one of the most turbulent, with police charges in the streets while the singer-songwriter from Xàtiva kept singing to keep the audience from leaving, making things even more complicated.

With the heat overwhelming us, we are increasingly using awnings to protect ourselves from the sun.

As its name suggests, the word entoldado is a derivative of toldo, just as in Catalan, envelat is a derivative of vela. Of course, today, entoldados are a thing of the past, although, with the heat that's overwhelming us, we're increasingly using awnings and umbrellas to protect ourselves from the sun. However, for some strange reason, many Catalan speakers prefer to use the Spanish word toldo for this purpose, instead of the Catalan words vela or tendal.

The first, vela, is the same word we use for the sailboats that propel them; while the second, tendal, is a derivative of tenda (tent), a word possibly related to the verb estendre (to extend). However, many Catalan speakers insist on using toldo.

I was saying that marquees have practically disappeared everywhere, replaced by tents. Now, the trend is to set them up in parks and vacant lots, creating temporary party venues, music bars, or whatever, to gather and enjoy themselves. In other words, the same purpose marquees served, but with new designs and better infrastructure. Nothing to say, everything evolves, and names also serve to leave the past behind and look forward.

The word "carp" comes from Quechua, the original American language spoken by some ten million people and which survives as best it can among the colonizing languages. By the way, in Quechua, the word "carp" also means "tent" or "sail," meaning that we haven't moved from where we were.