At Llegendàrium, by classic legends we mean those that belong to the collective heritage of a particular community and are rooted in a cultural and linguistic tradition extending beyond the immediate local sphere. The legend of Saint George, Our Lady of Montserrat and the Four Bars of Blood are good examples from Catalonia, but every region and country in the world has its own: the legend of the Children of the Moon among the Amazonian Yanomami, which tells of their origins as a people; the legends of the kensei Tsukahara Bokuden, expressing the Japanese ideal of the bushi; or the epic legend of the hero Chi Wara, who taught agriculture to the Bambara people of Mali.

These are narratives through which communities have identified themselves with particular values and ideas they considered their own, finding their place in the world —“this is who we are, this is where we belong”— and defining their relationship with outsiders. Because such stories help articulate a community’s identity —and have therefore sometimes been instrumentalised as political propaganda— generation after generation has returned to them as one might return to a compass.