Pax Romana at the Night of the Museum


Massive and peaceful Nit dels Museums. The first was on the wing, because the appointment has coincided this year with Eurovision. The second, if it had been necessary, was guaranteed, since the Archeology Museum of Catalonia (MAC), one of the 75 cultural facilities in Barcelona and the metropolitan area that have joined the celebration this year, was even made for the occasion with the services of a couple of basic units of the legion, not that of the goat , but the truly legendary, the Roman. Specific, two collusiona word that will surprise the most veteran readers (and wait for the end with the other…), but that was actually the name of the basic cell of the military force of Rome. Let’s review.

The father of the initiative is Ricard Llopdue to age, that is almost inevitable, Asterix reader, but the hobby does not exactly come from there. latin teacher on the Joan Pelegri Schoolbelieved necessary one day get out of the tedium of declensions the study of that language in class and literally take action. He could have been satisfied with taking his students to the MAC, for two reasons, because it was precisely in Hostafrancs, where the school is from, the place where in 1848, during some construction work, the sculpture of a Priapus, a minor god, of agree, but with something much larger between the legs. The piece is exhibited just as you enter the museum on the right and is two meters high, so picture the rest.

That, in any case, would have been easy. He launched a study workshop of the Roman soldieryof their techniques, your accoutrementsfrom Your habits and, of course, from vocabulary to designate each thing and function, like the ‘contubernium’. The word, in the case of Spain, has been sewn until further notice to the use that Francisco Franco made of it with his ridiculous flute-like voice (“all the protests that have taken place obey a masonic-leftist conspiracy, of the political class, in collusion with the communist-terrorist subversion in the social sphere, which if it honors us, it debases them”) but in reality it was an expression on which an empire was built.

Llop tells it. A conspiracy was eight men, a mule, a portable tent and only four bedsbecause when half of the members of that unit slept, the rest did what was supposed to be necessary then in the camp, sharpening the ‘gladius’, the basic sword, doing the laundry or rehearsing the obscenities that they would croon in the next parade, “’urbani, servate uxores: moechum calvum adducimus’”, for example, that is, “citizens, save your wives, we are bringing a bald adulterer”, which is what the troops jokingly intoned to announce the arrival of Julius Caesar.

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What has been carried out at the gates of the MAC by Barcino Oriens (the re-enactment group set up by Llop with parents from the school, friends and the occasional former student, and with an obsessive historical fidelity, nothing to do with those fake Romans of Holy Week) is, in essence, a tiny sample of what that in other latitudes is a huge spectacle. The historical recreations of the Roman legions of Nimes and Arlesin France, and those held in various German cities they are, apparently, big words, but they may never have had the luck that the soldiers of Llop had during the Nit dels Museums. The two conspiracies were about to cross a zebra crossing when, in Latin, because that is how they communicate with each other, they received the order to speed up their pace, stop and line up in a ‘repelere equites’ position. A Ferrari was coming down the road, come on, about 800 barbarian horses, and the scene has been stupendous. The engine of the sports car roared and the lances of the legionnaires poked out between the shields. Get over that Eurovision.

And that it also exceeds the wise lessons that Llop has imparted, like the one promised at the beginning, another word to remember. The sheath of the ‘gladius’ was called in Rome the ‘vagina’. You see, love and war are two sides of the same sestertius. How great is the Nit dels Museums’.


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