Rusiñol and Casas also dressed up and ate 'xató'

It is February at the end of the 19th century in Sitges. And Carnival, xató, El Retiro, El Prado and L’Eco de Sitges are the stars of local life. 130 years have passed, but the essence remains the same.

On February 16, 1896, the pages of L’Eco de Sitges reported on the celebration of Dijous Gras in El Retiro, three days earlier (at that time, L’Eco was published on Sundays). Santiago Rusiñol, Miquel Utrillo, the architect Gaietà Buïgas (who had designed the market building, next to the City Hall, inaugurated in 1889) and about twenty other people participated. As the article details, they tasted “the indispensable xató” and toasted “with champagne”. This is the oldest documentary reference to the word xató in Sitges.

Just seven years earlier, Rusiñol himself was one of the promoters of a Carnival party at the Teatre Líric in Barcelona, ​​organised by the Cercle Artístic, and which was called El ball dels artistes. Some of the most important names in the city's artistic scene attended in costume: Rusiñol dressed as a 19th century romantic. Casas went as a 13th century Florentine; the architect Francesc Rogent as a medieval plebeian; the cultural promoter Pere Romeu as a captain; the writer Pompeu Gener as a marquis... Some of the images of these costumes are part of the Santiago Rusiñol Collection of the Cau Ferrat Museum.