Human Towers: A Tradition Rooted in the History of Catalunya

Introduction:

Imagine that you lived in a city that was filled with celebrations open to everyone in the city almost every weekend. Now imagine that these celebrations, or fiestas populares, included special events and traditions that you couldn’t find in any other region in the world. This describes the city of Barcelona and the surrounding region of Catalunya.

During my second weekend in Barcelona, I was lucky to be able to experience the city’s largest celebration, or la fiesta major, called La Mercè. You might remember that, in my first post, I briefly mentioned one of the traditions of La Mercè. This week, I hope to go more in depth exploring the traditions that make this fiesta so special, specifically the castells tradition.

What tradition did I learn about?:

One of the main traditions of La Mercè is the castells. While castells is technically Catalan for “castle” (or castillo in Spanish), castells are really “human towers." The tradition of human towers started way back in Catalunya in 1712. That is over 300 years ago! However, the tradition really became popular in the 1960s.

At this time, women and children began to participate in the towers. This allowed the human towers to grow taller, up to nine to ten “stories” tall!

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