The Canigou from Prades Market Square

Every morning when we are at our house in Prades in the Languedoc-Roussillon, as we walk to the market square we are presented with this sight.
 
The Canigou.  Until the 18th century thoughts to be the highest mountain in the Pyrenees.  This mountain has symbolical significance for Catalan people.  On its summit there is a cross that is often decorated with the Catalan flag.  Every year on 23 June, the night before St John’s day (nit de Sant Joan), there is a ceremony called Flama del Canigó (Canigou Flame), where a fire is lit at the mountaintop.  People keep a vigil during the night and take torches lit on that fire in a spectacular torch relay to light bonfires somewhere else. Some estimates conclude that about 30,000 bonfires are lit in this way all over Catalonia on that night. 
 

Hilaire Belloc wrote: “…. it is the mountain which very many men who have hardly heard its name have been looking for all their lives”.