sept 24 merci

seems like every time i turn around there is a school / business holiday.  corrinne has been in school for three weeks. two of those weeks included time off to party.  this week it was the two days off to celebrate  one of the co-patron saints of barcelona.  i assume the future will provide a few days off to acknowledge the other of the co patron saints.  this celebration is called "Merci".  a four day weekend of concerts, fireworks, parades, tall ships, and my favorite, casteller.  casteller is one of the more exciting pastimes of the catalon people.  it is basically  teams of people called catellers who form human pyramids.  they are similar to what we might see cheer leaders do, but they take it up quite a few notches.  we went to the square at the correct time to watch the castellers.  the square was packed.  we were in the middle of a few thousand people all pushing and looking for position.  three teams of castellers squeezed in with us.  in turn, each team builds a human pyramid/tower.  first team starts with an easy formation, challenging the next team to do a better/higher/more complex formation. they started with maybe four people high,   largest people on the bottom, smaller and smaller people as they get higher, topped off by the smallest which looked to be a three or four year old who climbs like a monkey up one side and down the other.  the  monkey has to pause at the top, hold on to whoever he is standing on with one hand and raise the free hand to the sky to show he is in control at the top.  the crowd goes wild as the castellers quickly reverse the build until the last level is safely down.  it looked like between 40 and 60  team members use their bodies to support the whole structure.  they create a very tight scrum which supports the others who climbed on.  the taller the formation, the bigger/tighter the scrum. it was crazy and the formations kept getting taller & taller.  i would never have let my child do it. someone said that one team had over 1000 members (not all show up to each event).
after a while we moved out of the crowd to get some air.  watching from about 100 feet away i watched a formation that was trying to quickly un-build, implode.  it was very fast. i think there was four levels still up.  a load gasp from the crowd, then the castellers raised arms to show their well being, and the crowd clapped support.  much like an injured footballer who gets an ovation when walking of the field.  I have asked several catalonians why they do this thing.  they seem perplexed by the question and do not have a real answer. they just always have.  im going to google the history of it.
i just googled it ,  there is no mention of why it started, just that it started in south catalonia in the 18th century.  maybe it started as a way to get solders up and over castle walls.  try googling  "castell" for some more / better pictures and info.