FIESTA NACIONAL DE ESPAÑA

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It's a Wednesday evening and the city is silent. It's raining, which — for a population unaccustomed to any kind of precipitation — is the Catalan equivalent of a 12-inch Boston snowfall; few people venture outside and drivers seem to believe they're one raindrop away from losing complete control of their cars.

In addition to the weather, it's also particularly quiet because today's a national holiday. Stores and schools and businesses are closed and the typical cacophony of motos at rush hour is on (welcome) hiatus. Maybe, you'd think, were it not for the rain, people would be outside celebrating; this is, after all, a city that boasts a near-continual calendar of festivals. Celebrating is what Barcelona does best. But after my many "so what's this holiday all about?" conversations with locals, I'm not sure anyone here would be celebrating even under the best of atmospheric circumstances.

Living life according to a foreign holiday schedule is a little bizarre. There were no fireworks on July 4 and Labor Day was celebrated with, well, labor — but now we have this random midweek holiday, which no one can really explain the significance of. It's the Fiesta Nacional de España, which apparently commemorates a grab-bag of special things — first and foremost, Christopher Columbus's arrival in the Americas. (Huh, not so foreign, after all.) Now I've never met an American who's super gung-ho about the U.S. Columbus Day, but there seems to be a special brand of apathy here. I've been told that because it's a national holiday (read: belonging to a nation that many Catalans don't want to be a part of), there is a very definite local blasé. But after poo-pooing October 12, many were quick to reference the regional importance of September 11 — the Fiesta Nacional de Catalunya — which has become a symbol of Catalan efforts for independence.

Ah, life as an expat — marked by the interesting things you learn ever-so-slowly after asking a hopelessly large number of dumb (and probably inappropriate) questions.