Comte Arnau

Among the traditions of the Catalans, one of the most well-known is the castells or castles, usually translated into English as human towers. It is also a highly symbolic tradition, although to the eye of a tourist or a passer-by, this may just look like a spectacular but crazy thing with children doing the risky part. However, the risks of it are much fewer than it first seems, and the fun, sense of collectivity, mix of decision, courage, accuracy, and balance exceed by far every other feeling. The tradition goes back to the 18th century. The motto of the castells, "strength, balance, courage and wisdom" says it all.

A human castle must be done with mathematical accuracy, after much training, with a pinya (group of people around it) that works as a net in case it falls down, a first floor made by strong hefty guys, and a series of floors with younger and lighter people, guided by the voice of a team master. The process is indicated to those below by the music of the drums and gralles (Catalan double reeds), which is always the same to mark the steps. The top of the castle is half-finished when a child crouches down and the enxaneta or child at the top gets on him and raises his/her hand. When that is done, the castle is 'loaded' and that means some points but it has to be still 'unloaded' in order to get the whole score. It is a league formed by several colles or teams, each one with a distinctive shirt colour, who build different human castles in different festival days along the season.



The human values of commitment and fellowship have made that in recent years other countries have become interested in this tradition, specially Chile, forming teams of their own. Other similar human towers can be seen in places like India, but never in such a complex, high and elaborated form.

The tallest castell up to date has probably been the 3 of 10 (people per floor), performed in 1998 by the team from Vilafranca, in central Catalonia. This is a video of it. Unfortunately, it could only be crowned, and not finished, but the difficulty of it was extreme and it was highly celebrated.

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