Fire in the Placa. Dorothy Noyes
century pigtails. The dancers wear red tunics trimmed with gold, reminiscent of the gramalla worn by municipal councillors in Catalonia before 1714. They first appear in municipal records in 1855 (Farràs i Farràs 1979, 215), probably in imitation of other mountain cities such as Olot or Vic. They were easily damaged and repaired as the city could afford it, and were not considered essential to the Patum until the early twentieth century (Armengou [1968, 1971]1994, 108).
The dance of the Nans Veils imitates that of the giants and shares their tunes: it is a simple waltz with some changing of partners and exchange of positions, and the dancers play castanets in the first section. The second section is a faster 4/4 time with the same movements. The inner circle of the crowd helps to guide the dancers, who can see very little and, imbalanced by the heavy heads, are prone to vertigo. At the end, each nan spins in place.
GEGANTS
There are two pairs of giants, tall effigies on wooden armatures with a carrier hidden in the skirts.10 Head and hands are beautifully sculpted out of fortified papier-mâché, and they wear natural wigs which must be coiffed every year by hairdressers. The clothes are rich and expensive, in varying tones of red and green with gold trim; the giantesses wear jewelry. In late nineteenth-century Barcelona, the costume of the giantess announced the summer fashions; Berga was too poor to dress its giantesses anew every year, but their coiffures served the same purpose.
The Gegants Vells (Old Giants) are tan in complexion, and the male is dressed as a Moor, with a turbaned helmet and a scimitar in his belt. He wears a moustache, and brown hair curled below his ears, and a red jacket with a paler tunic beneath. He carries a mace in his right hand, resting on his shoulder. The geganta, slightly fairer, is dressed as a queen with a tiara and a green veil over her brown hair; she carries a bouquet in her lifted right hand. The Moorish dress does not make the giant alien in popular eyes: in the first known drawing of the Patum, from 1838 in the middle of the first Carlist War, he is shown wearing the emblematic beret of Carlist Berga.
The Gegants Nous (New Giants), from 1891, are usually known as the Gegants Negres or Black Giants because of their complexions. They are, however, dressed as Christians, and their blackness dates from the turn of the century, when the black Madonna of Montserrat was being promoted as the national patron: it is associated with the chthonic rather than the foreign. They are among the tallest giants in Catalonia and require exceptional strength to dance. The giantess is very handsome; like her sister, she wears a tiara, back veil, and earrings. Her ample skirts are green with yellow trim, and her left hand holds a bouquet. The Black Giant, with his black beard, silver helmet, huge mace, and imposing figure, is the cynosure of all eyes when his crimson velvet cloak spins in the plaça; he is the object of numerous erotic fantasies on the part of both sexes, and it is the cap de colla and his intimates who have the privilege of dancing him.
Figure 6. The Gegants begin their spin. Photo by Luigi, Berga.
The giants process, waltz, and spin. In the Wednesday noon passada through the streets and the Wednesday and Saturday night passacarrers (in which only the two Old Giants participate), the giants are walked by the geganters, who take turns; according to the energy of the carriers and the visibility of the place, they dance instead of processing; at the stops in the route they do a full dance. In the Patum of the plaça they dance to the same waltz tunes used for the nans vells. Their movements are limited by their size, and in the night Patums the crossovers between pairs are eliminated. The faster section and especially the final spin are tests of prowess among the geganters and the high point of the middle section of the Patum for the public. In the tirabols at the end of the Patum the two Gegants Vells are spun in a corner, with the geganters taking turns and defying each other to resist vertigo the longest.
Most major cities in Catalonia kept their giants as the last remnant of the early modern entremesos, so festival giants are familiar sights and widely invoked in popular idiom to comment on both social inequality and state administration. “If everyone were equal, who would carry the giants?” asks one proverb, and a 1929 protest song from the textile factories near Berga repeats the theme:
Els burgesos ens volien fer la por
però els obrers del Llobregat no en tenim, no
Que no es pensin que encara és com abans
que pertot allà on passaven ens fèien bailar els gegants.
The bourgeois wanted to frighten us
but the workers of the Llobregat aren’t afraid, no
They’d better not think that it’s still like before
when everywhere they passed they made us dance the giants.
(Ramon Vilardaga, personal communication)
In fact, up through the 1950s the heavy entremesos of the Patum were danced by lower-class men given both a cash payment and a new pair of espardenyes by the Ajuntament.
The Ajuntamen’s expenditures also feature in giant idiom. When city officials are observed to be conspicuously consuming resources it’s not clear they possess, then the giantess pays: paga la geganta. Those people fortunate enough to have bureaucratic sinecures or merely secure, well-paid government positions, such as a schoolteacher or a firefighter, cobren de la geganta (are paid by the giantess) or, more pointedly, mamen de la geganta, suckle her.
The geganters are a large comparsa of perhaps twenty men: unlike the more fluid turcs i cavallets or nans, in which only those doing the immediate salt are costumed, all the geganters are marked by their red shirts, white trousers; and a faixa for support. Those not dancing the giants are supporting and guiding them from outside. Except within the single dances of the Patum in the plaça, the geganters have to take frequent turns because the effigies are so heavy.
NANS NOUS
Introduced in 1890, when the Patum was being dressed up for summer visitors, the New Dwarfs represent two couples, an old one and a young one. The old man scowls slightly and wears a brimless black hat with gold braid. Because of the ambiguous hat, he is sometimes called “the priest;” he is also known as “the notary” or “the ugly one.” The old woman wears a cloth bonnet; the young one has a sculpted pink hat with an upturned brim. The young male is the most difficult to dance because of his heavy broadbrimmed light blue hat, for which he is known as el barret blau. Their general effect was best characterized by Xavier Fàbregas: “sundayed up … like the commercial petty bourgeosie who want to show off to their neighbors, and distinguish themselves in every possible detail from the country people” (1976, 140).
These dwarfs have the most complex dance steps of the Patum, involving hand clappings, skips in place, and spins between couples. The two comparses of nans are fairly open to female participation. The caps de colla of both Old and New Dwarfs are in their thirties, and the dancers tend to be in their teens or twenties because it is quickness and agility rather than strength that are required. They are often recruited directly from the Children’s Patum.
Figure 7. The crowds of the 1980s dance with the Nans Nous. Photo by Luigi, Berga.
In Catalonia as elsewhere in Spain, dwarfs always appear in relation to giants, and each takes meaning from the other: often as parents and children, or as graceful upper class and clumsy lower class (Amades 1934, no; Brandes 1980, 27–32). Entering the festival in the nineteenth century, the dwarfs are always seen by Catalan scholars as an indicator of democratic tendencies: “the common people incorporating themselves into the traditional mythology” (Armengou [1968, 1971]1994, 109). But in truth the configuration is more complex, and especially in the Patum: the common people were already there, in devils and guita. Unlike these, the dwarfs are controlled; they do not salt upwards, but dance in place; they emulate the giants