You'll be pleased to know that this is the end of my holiday round up, but I have left the best till last. This last trip is probably better explained by someone into mystery beasts like the excellent
Karl Shuker, but on one of our trips to Tarragona we found round by the Cathedral steps, were people setting up for some sort of parade.
There were two giants (Gegantes Catalan or Gigantes in Spanish) a man and a woman in medieval dress.
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| Los Gigantes |
Also a mule known in the Catalan bestiary as Mulassa (bottom Photo).
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| Donkey one. |
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| Mulassa with band. |
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| The strangely priapic Castell. |
| Mulassa sort of operates like a panto horse with a person in the front as the head end and another person at the back providing the back legs so to speak. I have seen Youtube clips of it dancing around in a circle to music but when we saw it, it had to move out the way of a truck so it could pass which was quite funny in itself. The main obstacle to what was going on is that there is precious little in a language I can understand, its Catalan folklore and as they seem to be fiercely protective of their language and customs, nothing is bilingual not even in regular Spanish, which I can at least have a fighting chance at. Its maybe part of the Santa Tecla Festival (St Thecla?), or it may not, I would welcome some comments as to what its all about. What I do know is that this was on behalf of a sick kid in hospital and they sold shirts for 5 Euro. They had an inflatable human tower and a band playing music which was quite nice. We sat for a good half hour watching them set up and play a few songs and stuff before moving on. It was an unexpected find on a good day out. | | |
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