Llegendàrium is a research and outreach project devoted to folklore, legends, folktales, beliefs and traditions rooted in oral and popular culture. Born in Catalonia and with a particular focus on the cultural heritage of Catalan-speaking territories, the project also explores traditions from across Europe and around the world, seeking the connections, parallels and differences that both unite them and make them unique.

Llegendàrium is particularly interested in the stories and beliefs that have travelled from generation to generation: fireside tales, legends rooted in particular places, supernatural beings, customs, superstitions, rituals, festivals and motifs that reappear in different forms across widely separated cultures and periods. The aim is not merely to collect them, but to ask where they come from, how they have changed and what they can tell us about the communities that passed them on.

Llegendàrium’s research seeks to trace each tradition back to its roots and interpret it within its historical, social and cultural context. What are the earliest versions we know? How has a story changed over time? To which tale type does it belong? Which folkloric motifs shape it? What does it share with other narratives, and what makes it distinctive? Is it still being passed on, or has it ceased to be part of a living tradition? What might it have meant to those who told it in the past? And what does it mean to us today?

The answers are rarely singular or definitive. Folklore is ever-changing, contradictory and profoundly human, and Llegendàrium seeks to embrace this complexity rather than reduce it to simple interpretations. Its articles therefore draw on primary and secondary sources, bibliographies and specialist scholarship, compare traditions from different regions and cultures, and explore different possibilities of interpretation whenever the evidence allows.

Llegendàrium is intended for curious and discerning readers willing to venture beyond the best-known versions and familiar assumptions; readers eager to discover unexpected aspects of tradition and follow paths that are not always comfortable or reassuring. Above all, it is for those who wish to make the stories inherited from oral culture —whether ancient or contemporary— their own: to understand them for what they are, experience them and, in turn, pass them on.

This work does not end on the screen. The articles published on the website extend into books and other publications, where particular subjects can be explored at greater length and in greater depth, as well as into gatherings, talks, collaborations and other outreach initiatives. Llegendàrium is therefore a project in constant motion, bringing research and transmission together, and combining scholarly rigour with the pleasure of telling a good story once again.

By rediscovering and reaffirming the importance of the popular imagination, Llegendàrium is founded on the conviction that oral, local and collective storytelling remains essential in an increasingly barren, dehumanised and individualistic world. This is its heart: to return the waters of imagination to a corner of this confused and dying wasteland, and to nurture the communal spirit that begins to grow again whenever someone tries to bury it.