On Sunday, this band was playing in the plaza in front of the cathedral.

They made a unique sound, being made up of eleven players, most of whom played instruments I'd not heard before. This uniquely Catalan band is called a cobla and is missing one of its normal complement of exactly twelve players, the effect of which I felt not at all. I mean, what exactly is a cobla supposed to sound like, anyway?

This young man is playing what appears to be the world's longest, loudest oboe. It resembles a shawm, an ancestor of the modern oboe, but his instrument evolved for outdoor playing. To say it has a piercing voice would be understatement.

The band contained four of these woodwinds, two tenoras (like the one shown in the photo) and two soprano instruments called tibles.

Four other players had familiar instruments: two cornets, a trombone and a double bass, so we can dispose of them without further comment. But the remaining three were wierd. This man is one of the two fiscorn players. A kind of trumpet on steroids, the fiscorn is a relative of the flügelhorn, if that helps. (God, I loved writing that sentence.)

The fiscorns sounded loud, brassy and unrefined, as you might expect from their appearance.

True wierdness, though, is reserved for the band leader. He is playing two instruments: the flabiol and the tabal.

The flabiol is the one-handed flute he's holding in his left hand. The tabal is the tiny drum hung on a strap around his neck and supported by his flute arm, freeing his right hand to strike the drum with that dinky little wand.

The reason the cobla is playing today, as they do every weekend day, is so that people can dance the sardana, Catalonia's national dance. Passers-by drift into the plaza and form rings of as many as twenty dancers and, holding hands, spontaneously begin dancing.

When one ring gets too large, another one forms, until the whole plaza is filled with rings of dancers.

The sardana is a slow, graceful, but intricate dance, containing as it does 76 steps performed in groups of four. It requires intense concentration to know where you are in the sequence and what steps to take next.

More than focused, though, the dancers seem to be transported, as if they move onto a higher plane while dancing.

This is not some cheesy reencatment of a folk dance done to entertain tourists. Ordinary citizens come out to the plaza for their own personal enjoyment. They don't care if you watch them or not. Because of this, what you are seeing has solid authenticity, and is all the more moving for that.