Cathedral of the Sea

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BERNAT REALIZED NOBODY was looking in his direction, and glanced up at the clear blue sky. The weak late September sun played on the faces of his guests. He had put so much time and effort into preparing the feast that only bad weather could have spoiled it. He smiled up at the autumn sky, and when he looked down again, his smile broadened as he listened to the hum of happy voices in the cobbled courtyard that ran alongside the animal pens at the foot of his farmhouse.

His thirty or so guests were in high spirits: the grape harvest that year had been magnificent. All of them—men, women, and children—had worked from dawn to dusk harvesting the grapes, then treading them, without allowing themselves a single day’s rest.

It was only when the wine was ready to ferment in its barrels and the grape skins had been stored to distill their liquor during the slack days of winter that the peasant farmers could celebrate their September feast days. And it was then that Bernat Estanyol had chosen to be married.

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