Espinelves

We're looking for a Christmas tree and we've come to the right place. Espinelves is the Christmas tree capital of Catalonia, with a special fair lasting more than a week every year. We've chosen a good day to come, though, avoiding the weekends and Spain's unlikely twin December public holidays celebrating the Constitution (6 December) and the Immaculate Conception (8 December), when the village would be packed with visitors. Today's an ordinary Thursday and there are quite enough of them even so.

Espinelves is a pretty stone-built village just north of the Montseny mountains and not far from the city of Vic. Almost half a century ago now, someone realised that lots of local farmers were growing Christmas trees and decided to organise a fair to promote the sale of them and now the village has become known for this seasonal event.

We follow directions from some of the volunteer marshals and park the car, slightly surprised that no-one seems to want to charge us for the privilege, and wander round the stalls, picturesquely laid out in the village streets. There are Christmas trees, of course, but also plenty of possible presents and seasonal and unseasonal goodies - cheese, cured meats, cakes, sweets, herbs and spices.

Almost as prominent as the trees are pieces of log of different sizes with red hats and smiling faces painted on one end. These are tions, a particularly Catalan Christmas tradition. Families with children buy a tió (or, if they are real traditionalists "capture" one in the forest). Once at home, it is "fed" on scraps and food waste - orange peel is particularly popular, I'm told. Some even "grow" considerably in the weeks leading up to Christmas.

Then, on Christmas Eve, the tió is brought into the living room, its rear end covered in a suspiciously bulging blanket, and the children of the house take it in turns to beat it with sticks, encouraging it to "shit" presents for them by singing a little song. There are different versions, but one of the most popular goes like this:

Come on, Tió, shit
hazelnuts and nougat.
Don't shit herrings
they're too salty.
Shit nougat - that's better.

Come on, Tió, shit
hazelnuts and nougat.
If you don’t want to shit I’m going to hit you with a stick, very hard, very hard!

(I've put nougat in the translation, but what the children actually ask for is torró, the Catalan version.)

The presents the tió "shits" are then brought, one by one, out from under the blanket strategically placed to preserve its modesty, and given to the appropriate child. Quite what message children draw from this little exercise is something I've always wondered. That if someone doesn't give you a present you have the right to hit them with a stick? Fortunately, perhaps not, because Catalonia doesn't seem to have a larger population of muggers than anywhere else in Europe.

It does provide evidence, though, if any more were needed, of the Catalans' scatalogical obsessions, particularly when it comes to Christmas. Because on the very next stall we find crib decorations including another famous character from seasonal Catalan folklore: the caganer or "shitting man". No-one knows why every Catalan crib - some of which are highly elaborate dioramas going far beyond what we'd strictly consider to be the nativity scene - has to have one of these little squatting figures, red barretina on his head, white shirt, dark trousers at half mast and a small pile of brown excrement behind him. Some say he's a reminder of the humanity of Jesus Christ, others that he represents the fertilisation of the earth and good luck for the New Year. But he's always there and often, in the larger cribs, finding him is turned into a game for children.

Nowadays, caganers have become an industry. They can be bought from shops and online all year round and anyone who's anyone can be turned into a caganer figure, from politicians to sportspeople. If you don't believe me, take a look at this website, which even offers customised caganers (yes, you can make one of your boss!) and something called the Caganer Experience. The mind can do nothing other than boggle!

We prefer to buy some pretty bowls and a piece of cheese, and we're now heading up to the village church at the top of the hill. It's the epitome of a Catalan Romanesque church - small and simple, but not at all the worse for that, with its triple rounded apse and square, Lombard-style tower. In fact it's just the kind that often appear in those diorama-type Catalan cribs, although quite how Bethlehem could possibly have had its very own Romanesque church is about as big a mystery as how the Virgin Mary could give birth less than three weeks after the Immaculate Conception!

We're not here to answer theological or cultural puzzles, though. We're here to buy a Christmas tree, and we've found one, at the stall right beside the car park. It's a beauty: nice and straight, with plenty of branches, so we pay and carry it the short distance to the car. It's at times like these I'm glad I can fold the back seats down to extend the boot. With our tree in the back, we start to head home, now caught in what seems like a traffic jam running all round the village. After a long wait, we find the cause is a little Christmas surprise: the apparently free car parking isn't free after all - there's a five-euro charge which you have to pay before you can get out! Merry Christmas to you too!