If I say the word "barrufet", nowadays all Catalan speakers will think of these guys:
The famous Belgian comic book and cartoon Les Schtroumpfs (translated to English as The Smurfs) was translated to Catalan for the first time in 1967, and the translator chose the name would be Els Barrufets.
The translator, Albert Jané, got the name "barrufet" from a being in Catalan mythology. The original barrufets in mythology are tiny wind elves or tiny wind demons.
In Spanish, the translation is Los Pitufos, which also comes from Catalan culture. These comic books were translated to Spanish for the first time in 1969, and the translator who made it is a Catalan man named Miguel Agustí. He decided to base the translation on the Catalan fairytale about a boy called Patufet who was born as small as a coin and who eventually hides from the rain under a lettuce and gets eaten by a cow, but later escapes in a fart.
In fact, Patufet is usually drawn wearing the traditional Catalan clothes that men used to wear in the 1800s, including the iconic traditional Catalan hat (the barretina). My guess is that being tiny and wearing this hat is what made him connect The Smurfs and Patufet.
Patufet is one of the most famous children's stories in Catalonia, but I don't think Spanish people know it (unless they watched Les tress bessones/The Triplets maybe?). If there are any Spanish people reading this who have never lived in Catalonia, could you please comment or add in the tags if you knew Patufet's story?
