The mistake most international journalists make when covering Catalan popular culture is treating it as picturesque tradition — something quaint and separate from the political and social reality of the country. This misses the point entirely. Catalan popular culture is the living expression of a national identity that has no state. The castellers, the sardana, the correfoc and the Diada are not museum pieces but active practices through which Catalan identity is performed, transmitted and contested.
To cover them well requires understanding their political dimension: why the sardana was suppressed under Franco, why the Concurs de Castells in Tarragona attracts more television viewers in Catalonia than any other event, why the organisations behind these traditions have deep and complicated relationships with the independence movement.
Albert Mercadé has covered these events for Catalan public media for two decades — he has broadcast live from the Concurs de Castells, presented special programmes on La Mercè and knows the people behind every major cultural association in the country. That is the difference between a cultural story that feels authentic and one that feels like tourism.