One of the Mura houses decorated with 'tions'.
There are Christmas traditions like el tió –a tree trunk that children hit to make it shit (ahem) gifts– that those of us who are not Catalans find it most picturesque. And that in León we grew up with the story of the Old Woman of the forest, who lived in a cave and distributed food to the shepherds so that they could take it to the smallest of the house.
In rural settings, the tió originally represented that wood that country people burned in the fireplace to give them light and heat and, as the anthropologist Roger Costa explains, the trunk was burned from Christmas to Kings and then kept as a protective amulet (associated with abundance and fertility) and his ashes were distributed around the house and the countryside.
The Tió de Mura is a festival that celebrates this tradition in style.
Today the tió is no longer burned or considered an amulet, but has mutated into a much more childish ritual that consists of personalizing it by adding two legs, painting its face and dressing him with a small blanket and a Catalan cap.
A municipality that has taken this tradition very seriously is Mura, one of the most beautiful medieval villages in Bages (Barcelona), where you can go to see all the Tions that remain exposed in its streets, houses, squares and secret corners until the morning of January 6 at a party called El Tió a Mura.
As they tell us from their town hall: “In Catalonia, when these Christmas dates arrive, the boys and girls go to the forest to look for their uncle and when they find him they take him home and leave him food so that he can fatten up and so on. can give many gifts and sweets for the little ones. Although the uncle never gives the gifts but has to defecate them and for that the family gathers around him on Christmas Eve and sings a traditional song called Caga Tió, at the same time beating him with a cane”.
There are Tions who drive trucks, others motorcycles...
With just over 200 inhabitants, the town lives mainly from tourism, so this festival is a luxury showcase to publicize its narrow alleys and its charming stone walls (lately on the radar of the most seasoned instagramers) . In this way all the neighbors turn to El Tió a Mura decorating the entrances of their houses with these funny trunks, which are thus added to the great tions placed by the consistory.
For this reason and because, according to what the City Council tells us, there is also a contest in which, at the end of the exhibition, the most worked and decorated uncle is voted and awarded: "Since a small map of the town has been previously delivered, where the location of all the tions that compete" is recorded.
The trunk is dressed in a small blanket and a Catalan beret.