Força, equilibri, valor i seny

This past Saturday I woke up pretty late and went on the “Auxiliars de les Illes Balears” group on Facebook and saw that one of the assistants from the US who is part of a “Castellers” group invited everyone to come watch him and the Palma team he is on perform with two other groups in the city of Manacor in the eastern part of the island. I sent some text messages around to see if anyone wanted to join me. Only Alyssa, from Chicago, responded that she would be interested in coming to watch with me. We headed to the Estació Intermodal (the main train, bus, metro station of Palma) and bought tickets to go to Manacor. We ended up going down to the platform 45 minutes earlier than we had to and since you can’t get back trough without making your ticket invalid we were stuck down there until the train arrived to take us to the other end of the line, to Manacor.

The train ride was nice and we arrived in Manacor after an hour and ten minutes of train. We made our way to the center of town as that is where the cathedral was located and where the directions told us to go. After asking a few people how to get there we made it to the Plaza where the “actualizacions” or performances were taking place. We saw the other auxiliar (assistant) Joel who was part of the Casteller team of Palma.

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Castell is the Catalan word for “Castle” and Casteller is the word for a person who takes part in forming ‘human castles’. This tradition of building human castles or towers started in the town of Valls near the end of the 18th century. The typical attire of a Casteller is white pants, a black sash called “faixa”, a colored shirt, and a bandana. The sash which is black, varies in length depending on where one is in the Castell. It wound tightly around the mid area to offer support to the back for those on the bottom and also as a place for climbers to grab onto as a handhold or a foothold as they climb up the tower. The bandanas are also used around the wrists of those on the bottom to offer support and tied around legs, chests, stomachs, and other parts of the body for foot and hand holds for the climbers.  The Casteller’s motto is “Força, equilibri, valor i seny”, which means Strength, balance, courage and reason.

There are different types of Castells and they are named by the number of people who make up each level and the number of levels. Some of the largest towers have been Tres de nou(three by nine) and Tres de deu (three by ten). Many of the Castells that we saw this weekend were Cinc de cinc (five by five) and Cinc de ses (five by six). The bottom level, which is just a large group of people supporting the Castell, is called the ‘Pinya’.  The top most Castellers are usually young children and they are called “enxaneta”.

It was really really cool to see this for the first time in real life. I’ve seen it on television and it was so much better in real life. I’d really like to see a huge actualizació in Barcelona sometime! There was this one group from Barcelona that did this one Castell where they built it from the bottom. The top two levels got up on the “Pinya” and then it was built from the bottom meaning that you saw the top levels rise up until there were 5 levels. Once all 5 levels were built the “enxaneta” raises his/her hand and they begin to dismantle the Castell. A Castell is not complete unless it is succesfully built and dismantled without it falling apart. Below is a video and some photos of different Castells that I saw this past weekend.

Click here or the photo to see a larger version with a caption

Click here or on the photo to see a larger version and a description

Click here to see a larger version and description

Click the photo below to watch a video I took!

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Alyssa and I had planned to go back to Palma and cook dinner and make our way to Bluesville, a cafe where a live band plays. We ended up going over to another assistant’s house to have pizza with other assistants. We finally made our way out to Bluesville and by the time we got our drinks the band had stopped playing. I’ve decided that I hate crowded bars and clubs and I enjoy hanging out and talking, than going to a place where I can’t even hear myself speak.

This post is stored in the category of Contains Images, Contains Video(s), Made in Spain, Personal Post, Written in Catalan and was written by Derron Borders

Tags: Auxiliars de les Illes Balears, Bluesville, Castell, Casteller, enxaneta, faixa, Made in Spain, Mallorca, Manacor, Palma, Pinya, Valls

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