It is a hot summer night. Imagine a small cobbled Catalan town square, tall houses crowd around with small balconies outside many of the windows, most shop and bar windows are covered up with thick brown paper. In the bars people peer a little nervously out onto the square, outside the crowds are shoulder to shoulder, packed together in the smoky atmosphere. Small alleys and streets lead into the square which is lit rather dimly by old gas lights. Suddenly, from out of one of the alleys emerges a band of drummers, they are followed by an amazing beast, it looks like a female dragon and it is decorated with fizzling and exploding fireworks. You can tell that it is supposed to be female because it has two massive, obscene looking breasts at the front, this is "La Vibria", she is accompanied by an equally hideous male counterpart "El Drac Nou".
Like the Minehead Hobby Horse there is a man under each dragon, dancing and cavorting,
and like the man under the horse, the man under the dragon must be very strong. The dragon has a retinue
of dancers and devils - you know they are devils since they carry three pronged forks, also with exploding
and fizzing fireworks! Some other devils have hats with fireworks on them, they drop 'jumping jacks'
under the feet of a frenzied crowd of dancers who accompany the dragons. Sometimes the dancers are
encouraged with the pronged forks to dance a little higher, sometimes a blinding white catharine wheel
firework is lit, this fizzes on a devils fork, he chases people with it, and the crowd scatters or tries to hide.
Another even larger dragon, "Asmodeu" with two men under appears. The fireworks on the back end of this
beast are particularly vicious since they explode at about head height with an ear-shattering report. Each
dragon has a guide, a man holding a small flare, so that the dragon carriers can see where to go. Anyone
who has been under a morris beast in the dim light of a pub will know immediately what the problem is! An
interesting folklore survival accompanies these dragons, other beasts called "moulana", literally "mules",
appear, these tote fireworks even though some are made with rag tatters. Violet Alford, the Bristol folklorist, saw these
"mulasses" in the 1930's in this region, and she describes them vividly in her book "Pyrenean Festivals - Calendar Customs, Music & Magic, Drama & Dance" (Chatto and Windus, 1937),
together with many other aspects of what we witness in 1995.
The dancers crowd into the square, and an almost infantile dance tune starts to blare out.
Correfoc Tune - Manresa 1995, Collected by Joanna Maher
They start to dance around the square, holding each other by waists and shoulders in twos, threes and in longer lines, wheeling around the square with a kind of single step-hop dance. They all wear hats, some of red cloth with a curious motto, some with straw hats, red neckerchiefs cover their faces, indeed everybody is well covered up, mostly in denim! Suddenly there is another colossal explosion above their heads, the whole square has been decorated with a lattice of fireworks, they are set out in a huge net, and the explosions sweep around the net, setting off dazzling magnesium-white Roman candles as they go. The Roman candles point downwards and the dancers tuck their heads well underneath their hats and keep time to the music, but now dancing under a hail of fire and smoke that defies the imagination. Once the last firework has gone out the procession moves on to the next square, through narrow alleys and amid choking smoke and deafening explosions. The dragons and devils occasionally disappear off to the side to replenish their fiery armour, drink sangria, water, or to change or rest the man under the dragon. The 'Correfoc de Manresa' has to be seen to be believed. Minehead or Padstow Hobby Horses with fire!
The Correfoc ( literally 'Fire Running') is part of a larger event at the end of August and beginning of September known as 'Festa Major' (Great Festival), its origins are probably with the Feast of the Assumption, in Manresa it is also associated with the Festival of the Martyrs - referring to three Roman martyrs. Typical to Catalan towns are the presence of the "gegants", that is giant puppets, some 4 metres in height, constructed of wood and paste board (papier mache) and made to dance by a man underneath. There have been giants at the Manresa festivals since the middle of the last century, and in Catalonia and Spain there are now more giants than there are Morris sides in Britain.
Festa Major has its dancing giants - though they are noticeably absent from the night-time
Correfoc, they appear with other wonders in several parades. The giants are accompanied by 'Nans', six dwarf-
like figures with large heads. Another folk survival from Violet Alford's days is a large wooden eagle -
'L'Aliga' A troupe of tourney horses - Cavallets de Sant Jordi - accompany many of the parades, these are
danced by local boys and girls. On Sunday afternoon there was an exhibition of human pyramid building
by "Colla Castellera Tirallongues" the local team, and "Minyons de Terrassa" from the neighbouring town,
accompanied by a cobla orchestra, "Marina". The Catalonians have perfected this amazing social activity,
and we were privileged to be able to take our places with them in several castells, albeit on the bottom layer but these were six, seven and even eight person castells, each man standing on the other's shoulders. The castell
seems to grow from the crowd, the last person, usually a small child swarming barefooted up to the top as the
cobla band builds a climax for the team.
The Student Games of 1991 saw a visit from the Manresa gegants to Sheffield, this was such a success that Sheffield organised another festival in 1992, and this in turn brought the Sheffield gegants 'War' and 'Peace' and Sheffield City Morris onto the scene. 'War' and 'Peace' were presented to the City of Sheffield by their maker Jordi Grau of Terrassa in 1992, who, once they were made 'broke the mould' for each of them. Gegants are unique by tradition. Sheffield City Morris became their custodians. In fact Jordi made the torsos, and the wooden frames that support the these were made by a Sheffield kitchen design company - Pine Design. The costumes for the gegants were originally by Jordi, but have now been redesigned by Sara Eaton. 'Peace' is a woman, dressed in white, at present she looks rather like a bride, but eventually it is hoped her costume will be decorated with doves. 'War' is a spectacularly modern figure - based on "The Universal Soldier", a grim looking character, dressed in red and black, with a high-tech eye patch. Sheffield City Morris have made up some morris-like dances for their gegants, using the tunes "Nonesuch" and "Morrisco". It will be interesting to see how the dances develop, as I am sure they will, since this is the first time anyone has tried morris dancing with Catalonian gegants. "Dancing" a gegant is a considerable feat, and Sheffield City Morris certainly made them dance at the Festa Major this year! They danced a lot of Morris as well, in particular they put on a very fine display on saturday night (or was it sunday morning!), alongside of the Catalan dance groups.
The Morris were accompanied by other giant enthusiasts from the British Isles Giant Guild - BIGG. The Guild promotes the building, operating, and maintaining of carried "Dancing" or "Pageant" giants in the British Isles. BIGG have nearly four dozen giants listed, together with ninnies (See the nans below) and other beasts.