UP! STRENGTH, BALANCE, COURAGE & COMMON SENSE

Yesterday was a day of intense emotions. With hardly any time to rest, Claire Fontaine and The Grandma drove to Tarragona, where the greatest castells competition in history awaited them. 

Congratulations to the champions, Castellers de Vilafranca, and to all the colles that put on a fascinating, thrilling, and unique spectacle.

There is something almost impossible about a castell. Hundreds of people gather in a square. They look at one another, tighten their faixes, take their positions and begin to build. Bodies become foundations; shoulders become floors; arms become supports. Slowly, almost improbably, a human structure rises above the crowd. And somewhere at the very top, a child raises one hand. For a few seconds, architecture becomes human.

The origins of the Catalan castells can be traced back to the ball de valencians, a traditional dance related to the Valencian muixerangues. These performances ended with the construction of small human towers.

When this tradition reached the Camp de Tarragona, something changed. The human constructions gradually became more important than the dance itself. Rivalry encouraged groups to build higher and more difficult towers, and by the beginning of the nineteenth century two rival groups were already documented in Valls.

Valls became the cradle of the castells, and its Plaça del Blat is still considered kilometre zero of the casteller world. From there, a tradition was born whose fundamental idea is astonishingly simple: people standing on other people in order to reach higher. But simplicity disappears very quickly when a castell begins to grow.

A castell is not simply a tower. It is a carefully calculated human structure. At its base is the pinya, the mass of people that supports the tower, stabilises it and protects the castellers if the structure collapses. In the most difficult constructions, additional supporting levels appear above it: the folre and, in some cases, the manilles. Then comes the tronc, the visible body of the castell. Above it is the pom de dalt, formed by the youngest castellers. Finally comes the enxaneta, the child who climbs to the summit and raises a hand  -the aleta- to show that the castell has been carregat.

But reaching the top is only half the achievement. A castell must come down again. Only when every casteller has descended safely can it be said to have been descarregat. This is perhaps what makes castells so fascinating. They are architecture without stone, steel or concrete. Their materials breathe, tremble, become tired and feel fear.

A cathedral is designed not to move. A castell survives because hundreds of tiny movements constantly correct one another. It is an architecture of balance.

The traditional motto of the castellers is: Força, equilibri, valor i seny. Strength, balance, courage and common sense. Yet there is another element that is perhaps even more important: trust.

The enxaneta climbs because someone is underneath. That person stands because somebody else supports them. And beneath them there are dozens -sometimes hundreds- of people whose faces may never appear in the photograph of the completed castell.

There are no insignificant positions in a human tower. Perhaps that is why castells have become such a powerful symbol of Catalan popular culture. The individual achievement is impossible without collective effort. A castell does not ask who is the most important person. It asks where each person is needed.

This also explains the extraordinary capacity of the colles castelleres to integrate people. Age, origin, profession, social status or physical appearance matter much less than the contribution each person can make. There are positions for different bodies, different strengths and different abilities. And anyone can enter the pinya. You do not need to be born into the tradition to become part of it. You learn by standing beside others, rehearsing with them, trusting them and eventually becoming someone whom others can trust. Integration here is not theoretical. It is physical. You literally become part of something larger than yourself.

For most of their history, however, castells were overwhelmingly a male world. That began to change decisively during the final decades of the twentieth century. From the late 1970s and especially during the 1980s, women became increasingly present in the colles, not simply as spectators or supporters, but as castellers.

The change was social, but it was also technical. Different heights, weights and body types allowed the architecture of the tronc to evolve. Lighter structures could be built without sacrificing strength, helping the colles imagine constructions that previous generations could barely have contemplated. Women did not simply enter the world of castells. They helped transform what a castell could be. Their presence also reminds us that traditions survive not by remaining unchanged, but by being capable of changing without losing their identity.

On 16 November 2010, UNESCO inscribed the castells on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. The recognition went far beyond the spectacular nature of human towers. UNESCO highlighted something deeper: the way castells transmit knowledge from generation to generation and create a sense of identity, continuity, social cohesion and solidarity. That distinction seems particularly appropriate. A castell is intangible heritage in the most literal sense. When the tower comes down, nothing physical remains. There is no monument. No building. No object. What remains is the knowledge of how to build it, the memory of having done it and the community capable of doing it again.

And then came Sunday, 4 October 2026. The XXX Concurs de Castells in Tarragona offered one of those days when the limits of a tradition suddenly seemed to move. The Castellers de Vilafranca completed the 3 de 10 amb folre i manilles. Then the 4 de 10 amb folre i manilles. And finally they achieved something that had never been completed before: the extraordinary 9 de 9 amb folre. Nine people on each level. Nine storeys. A human structure of almost unimaginable complexity.

The Colla Vella dels Xiquets de Valls also pushed the frontier, completing the formidable 4 de 9 sense folre and loading the 3 de 9 sense folre, another structure situated at the extreme limits of what the human body and casteller technique can achieve.

Watching the Concurs, an inevitable question emerged. Where is the ceiling?

Every generation of castellers has probably believed that certain constructions marked the natural limit of human towers. And then another generation arrived. Techniques improved. Rehearsals became more sophisticated. More people joined the colles. Women transformed their structures. Medical and biomechanical knowledge increased. Castellers learned how to distribute weight more efficiently and control movements with extraordinary precision.

The impossible became possible. Then the possible became normal. And a new impossible appeared. But human beings have limits. Gravity has not changed. Bodies have not stopped being fragile.

There must be a point at which adding another level, removing another support or creating an even more complex structure becomes physically impossible. Perhaps some of the castells we are seeing today are already approaching that frontier. Perhaps the ceiling is close. Or perhaps, somewhere in a local d'assaig, somebody is already imagining a way of moving it again. That uncertainty is part of the beauty of the castells. Because their greatest achievement may not be reaching ten storeys, completing a castell sense folre or inventing another construction.

Their greatest achievement is demonstrating what human beings can do when nobody climbs alone. A castell rises because hundreds of people agree, for a few extraordinary minutes, to trust one another completely. And perhaps that is why, when the enxaneta raises a hand above the square, we all look upwards. Not because one person has reached the top. Because everyone has.

More information: Coordinadora de les Colles Castelleres de Catalunya

Ai quin plaer!

Quin regositj veure el nen en lo bell cim

com fa l'aleta...

Oh, what joy!

What delight, to see the child at the very top,

raising a hand in the aleta...

Josep Anselm Clavé

LA MERCÈ, BARCELONA ENJOYS AND RECOGNISES ITSELF

Leaving el Delta de l'Ebre is never easy, but knowing that on the way to Barcelona you'll make a morning stop in Tarragona to celebrate Santa Tecla with a spectacular castell event is always a great plan. 

If you then continue toward the capital and stop in Sitges in the afternoon -where they are also celebrating Santa Tecla- to enjoy the local culture and a delicious botifarrada by the sea, the journey home becomes much more pleasant, especially since your own city will be decked out the very next day to celebrate its own Festa Major.

Every September, Barcelona celebrates La Mercè.

For a few days, the city changes its rhythm. Squares become stages, streets become meeting places, balconies become viewpoints and thousands of people leave their homes to take possession of the city once again.

There are concerts, exhibitions, performances and events of every imaginable kind. Barcelona is a cosmopolitan city, home to people who have arrived from almost every corner of the world, and its Festa Major naturally reflects this diversity. And yet, year after year, some of the greatest crowds still gather around something much older.

A giant walking down a street. A human tower rising above a square. The sound of a gralla. The beating of drums. A dragon breathing fire into the darkness. 

Perhaps Joan Amades would not have been surprised. The great Catalan ethnologist devoted much of his life to collecting the customs, celebrations, songs, beliefs and traditions of ordinary people. His monumental Costumari Català understood popular culture not as something preserved behind glass, but as something alive: a collective language transmitted from one generation to another. La Mercè speaks that language extraordinarily well.

One of its most symbolic moments is the Toc d'Inici. The Festa Major begins not merely with words but with music, movement and ritual. The city's festive figures enter the scene and Barcelona seems to summon its own imaginary world into existence.

Giants and giantesses, dwarfs, beasts and traditional dancers are no longer decorative figures. For a few hours, they become inhabitants of the city. Then come the cercaviles. The giants advance slowly through streets that normally belong to buses, bicycles, taxis and hurried pedestrians. Children look upwards. Adults do too. There is something wonderfully subversive about a giant walking through a modern city. For a moment, everyday Barcelona disappears and another Barcelona emerges from underneath it.

And then there are the castellers. Few images can explain Catalan popular culture so powerfully. A castell exists only because many people agree to build it together. At its base, the pinya becomes an extraordinary human architecture of arms, shoulders and trust. Above it, floor after floor rises until the smallest casteller reaches the top and raises a hand. For a few seconds, the whole square seems to breathe as one. Strength alone cannot build a castell. It requires balance, courage, technique and, above all, confidence in others. Perhaps this is why the Diada Castellera attracts such enormous crowds during La Mercè. People are not simply watching a spectacle. They are watching a community construct something impossible and then carefully dismantle it again.

But Barcelona has another face during its Festa Major. When darkness falls, fire arrives. The Correfoc transforms the streets into a territory of sparks, drums, devils and fantastic beasts. Dragons and other creatures spit fire while the diables dance beneath showers of sparks. People do not merely watch. They run with them. Fire has accompanied Mediterranean celebrations for centuries. In the Correfoc, something ancient survives inside the contemporary city: our fascination with darkness, noise, danger, light and collective excitement. For a while, Barcelona ceases to look like the carefully ordered city of maps and avenues. It becomes elemental. Fire, smoke, drums and people.

Perhaps this is the most fascinating thing about La Mercè. Barcelona changes constantly. Languages change. Neighbourhoods change. People arrive and people leave. Buildings disappear and new ones rise. The city absorbs influences from everywhere because it has always been a Mediterranean port open to the world.

But when the Festa Major arrives, thousands of people still crowd into the streets to watch traditions whose roots reach far beyond their own lives. They wait for the giants. They follow the gralles. They look upwards when the castell begins to rise. They run beneath the sparks of the Correfoc. Modernity has not made these traditions irrelevant. Perhaps it has made them even more necessary. Because popular culture gives a city something that cannot be built with concrete or designed by an urban planner: a shared memory. And memory does not mean remaining trapped in the past. It means knowing where we come from while continuing to change.

Barcelona has traditionally been called the Cap i Casal de Catalunya. The expression is difficult to translate perfectly. It means much more than capital. Cap is the head; casal evokes the house, the home, the place where a community recognises itself. During La Mercè, the expression acquires a particularly beautiful meaning.

Barcelona is cosmopolitan, Mediterranean, contradictory, noisy, changing and extraordinarily diverse. But it is also the capital of Catalunya. And when the giants dance, when the gralles sound, when the castellers raise their towers and when the dragons fill the streets with fire, the city remembers it.

Perhaps Joan Amades would have walked among those crowds with his notebook in his pocket, observing everything. Perhaps he would have recognised many of the gestures. And perhaps he would have understood something that La Mercè continues to demonstrate every September: tradition survives not because we preserve it, but because we practise it. A tradition nobody performs eventually becomes history. A tradition that still fills the streets belongs to the present. And every September, during La Mercè, Barcelona does something wonderfully simple.

Perhaps this is why Joan Amades still feels so extraordinarily present during La Mercè. His work was never merely a catalogue of curious things that people used to do. By collecting giants and dances, songs and sayings, legends, beasts, customs and celebrations, he helped preserve the collective memory of a country.

In 2009, when Barcelona dedicated part of La Mercè to Amades on the fiftieth anniversary of his death, he was beautifully introduced almost as the character of a folk tale:

Once upon a time, there was a man who travelled throughout Catalonia asking people to tell him about their customs and traditions, so that he could write them down in a book and make sure that nobody would forget them.

And perhaps that is the best way to understand both Amades and La Mercè. Because traditions do not survive simply because somebody once wrote them down. They survive because somebody still carries the giant. Because somebody still plays the gralla. Because somebody still climbs onto another person's shoulders. Because somebody still dresses as a diable and lights the fire. And because thousands of people still come out into the streets to see them.

Barcelona changes. It has always changed. But beneath that constantly changing city there is another Barcelona made of gestures, sounds, memories and rituals passed from one generation to another.

Barcelona is the Cap i Casal. And every September, when the drums begin to beat, the giants start to dance and the first sparks illuminate the streets, that old Barcelona does not return from the past. It reminds us that it never left.

For during La Mercè, the enchanting magic of popular culture takes over the city, and each of us transforms for a day into whatever we wish to be -a devil, a casteller, a capgròs, or a queen -because this is Barcelona, ​​the heart and soul of Catalunya.

The city recognises itself.

Come and enjoy it with us. You are all invited!

More information: Runner Bean Tours

He fet el pregó per ser barcelonina, 

per dir-me Mercè 

i per dur Catalunya dintre meu.

I gave this opening address because I am a Barcelonian, 

because my name is Mercè, 

and because I carry Catalunya within me.

Mercè Rodoreda, Pregó de La Mercè, Barcelona, 1980

'ELS VERDS': UNESCO INTANGIBLE CULTURAL HERITAGE

The Grandma in Cal Figarot, Vilafranca

Vilafranca del Penedès is the capital of the county of the Alt Penedès in Catalonia. It is situated in the Penedès Depression on the left bank of the Foix River, and on the main axis of communication from Barcelona to Tarragona and València.

The town was founded in the middle of the 12th century as a result of the decline of Olèrdola, which had been until then the main local centre. It was established as the seat of a vegueria in 1304. The Corts were held in the town in 1218 under King Jaume I, and again in 1358–59 and in 1367. King Pere III El Cerimoniós died while staying at the royal palace in Vilafranca in 1285.

The gothic Church of Santa Maria, the royal palace (Palau Reial) and the Palau Baltà, are situated in the historic town centre. The Palau Reial, from the thirteenth century houses the town museum, with collections of archeology, paleontology, ornithology, ceramics and sacred art, and a Museum dedicated to Wine, the Vinseum. Other notable monuments include the Church of Sant Joan, the Convent of Sant Francesc and a number of old merchants' houses such as the Palau del Fraret, Palau Macià, the Casal dels Gomà, the Casal del Marquès d'Alfarràs and Cal Figarot, Casa Via Raventós the headquarters of the Castellers de Vilafranca.

More information: Turisme Vilafranca

Vilafranca is a centre for the local wine industry, along with neighbouring Sant Sadurní d'Anoia. Other local industries include textiles, metallurgy, food processing and construction materials. It is also an important commercial centre.

On August, 30 Vilafranca celebrates Sant Fèlix, its Patron Saint Festival. This day is very important not only for Vilafranca but for all Castellers fans because the city invites the best Colles Castelleres (Human Towers Groups) to participate in the event. Castellers were inscribed in 2010 on the UNESCO's Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

The local colla is Castellers de Vilafranca also known as Els Verds (The Greens) because of the colours of its shirt.

More information: Turisme Vilafranca

The Grandma has assisted to this wonderful event and has participated in it because it doesn't matter your size, your weigt or your force, everybody can participate in the construction of a castell or human tower.

During the travel to Vilafranca, The Grandma has finished her Intermediate Language Practice manual. The last lesson (Vocabulary 21) has talked about People and nothing better to do that participate in an international event like Sant Fèlix to be surrounded by the people of Vilafranca and its Castellers.

More information: People

The Castellers de Vilafranca is a cultural and sporting association whose main objective is to build castells also known as human towers. It has the status of a public-interest association. The group was founded in 1948 in response to the increased interest in human tower building in Vilafranca del Penedès, a Catalan tradition that has evolved since the 18th century Ball de Valencians, a dance from València.

The Grandma helps in the 3 de 10 castle

Nowadays, the Castellers de Vilafranca have about 400 active human tower building members of all ages, with no discrimination on the grounds of race, religion, sex or social status.

They share the common goal of building human towers, democratic values, cooperation and teamwork, a constant desire to surpass themselves, and a will to maintain a lead over a select and competitive group of rival human tower associations. The group’s headquarters is Cal Figarot, Casa Via Raventós, a house located in downtown Vilafranca del Penedès and specially adapted for human tower building activity.

The group is one of the most important organizations in Vilafranca del Penedès and has represented Catalan culture abroad numerous times. The association has more than five hundred official supporters, and has the support of several public and private institutions. 

In addition to hosting and participating in human tower exhibitions, it also organizes other cultural activities, such as small-scale concerts, a poetry contest, a massive bicycle event, a dominoes tournament, food events and a human tower school for kids.

The Castellers de Vilafranca’s efforts to preserve and promote popular Catalan culture have been recognized by the town of Vilafranca del Penedès, which awarded the group with the Medalla de la Vila (the town medal), and by the Generalitat de Catalunya (the Catalan Government) with the Creu de Sant Jordi (Cross of Saint George).

More information: The Telegraph

Resilience is all about being able to overcome the unexpected. 

Sustainability is about survival. The goal of resilience is to thrive.

Jamais Cascio