Goliath at the Party: A history of Catalonia’s Giants
Catalonia’s “gegants” parade through streets during festivals, representing historical, mythical, local figures. Rooted in religious processions, they’ve evolved over centuries, adapting to social, political and artistic changes.
You'll see them appearing out of narrow gothic streets onto imposing squares, or proceeding down the ramblas and carrers majors (main streets) of various Catalan cities and towns. They're typically around 20 feet tall, and tower over the surrounding crowd, often composed of excitable children. The legs and feet of their carriers are sometimes just about visible beneath the huge flowing skirts or baggy trousers.
Smaller models with comically big heads, called capgrossos, are often seen parading alongside the giants. From time to time, these impressive papier-mâché constructions will stop and perform a dance to a folkish tune played on the gralla (a type of flute), drums, and bagpipes known as a sac de gemecs, bag of moans.
Albert Garrido
When representing a figure such as Catalonia's august medieval King Jaume I, the tradition of the giants gives onlookers a sense of the historical figures who have impacted the country. When dressed up as popular figures such as Popeye or Dalí, the giants have a comic and surrealist effect. Other times they are anthropomorphic representations of landmarks of a particular place. Their heads can represent anything from a decorative element of a famous Gaudí building to a factory chimney, the type typical to the region conserved in dedication of the area’s industrial past. More often than not the gegants represent stereotypes from Catalan society, especially those associated with the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Joan Bautista
‘Giants’ – initially people on stilts wearing long clothes – became part of Eucharist festivities following a 1264 proclamation from Pope Urban IV that promoted theatrical plays as a way to promote the occasion. In 1317, a papal bull confirmed the centrality of processions in relation to the Eucharist (Corpus Christi) celebrations and in 1320, Barcelona became an early adopter of this directive, including within these processions the early versions of the feet-high papier-mâché giants which Catalonia is famous for today.
In 2024, Barcelona officially celebrated 600 years of the gegants. These celebrations have included special exhibitions featuring a variety of the city’s gegants, and also special events, such as a National Meeting of Giants in April, during which 230 giant collectives gathered at the city’s Arc de Triomf. While various sources document the city’s Goliath giant to have existed even earlier, the 1424 origin date is based on Barcelona’s Book of Solemnities, a historical record of events made at the time. Unlike many folk traditions such as the human castles, which are a surprisingly modern phenomena (at least when it comes to mass popularity), the gegants are bonafide folkloric insofar as their creation follows an uneven but unbroken trajectory over at least six centuries.
The gegants are not only a Catalan tradition; some variation of them has been part of religious processions in Ávila (to the west of Madrid) and Santiago de Compostela, in Galicia, famously the last stop on the Camino de Santiago. They are also associated with the Tarasca, a particular type of dragon-like creature (which, since the import of gunpowder, has been able to literally breathe fire), that was also originally a typical feature of Corpus Christi processions. Undoubtedly, it is Catalonia which keeps the tradition alive most vibrantly: today there are 228 official colles gegants, groups that build and maintain them, in the region.
Uncertain origins
The original significance of the giants is hard to determine. There may be some pagan influence, though the early giants specifically representing Goliath, famously a big guy, probably set the mould. Giants are a recurring feature in medieval Spanish thought. In a famous scene, Don Quixote mistakes a series of windmills for giants, “with whom I intend to do battle and take away all their lives, with whose spoils we will begin to enrich ourselves.” A little under one hundred years before Cervantes was writing, conquistadores described Native Americans, whom they would soon brutally enslave, as “giants.” There were instances where figures of giants were placed at the triumphal arches of cities, and would represent medieval saints, characters from chivalric literature, and popular figures from classical antiquity. Sometimes these would be destroyed in dramatic explosions of fireworks. It appears that, at one point, giants were genuinely feared.
The custom of the early giants being purely representative of Christian iconography would make way for the representation of regional, municipal and secular identities. One of the most popular of these identities is of the male Catalan worker, always white-shirted and with a barretina, the traditional red cap, perched on his head. As art historian Jo Farb Hernández points out, by the 18th century Corpus Christi processions had become so secularized that "before long, the clergy were prohibited from participating in the celebration's more theatrical aspects."
Marco Pachiega
Hernández notes that a giantess was a major part of processions in Girona by 1557, although this might not have been a compliment, as many festive representations of women were tied to fears around their supposed Eve-like quality to corrupt. Later on, in 19th century Barcelona, the giantesses would be dressed in the latest fashions from Paris, meaning that they “thus took on the civic role of the social model". The giantesses don’t perform this function today, although there are still giantesses dressed as this 19th-century cultural stereotype.
The giants benefited from the festivalization of Spanish towns and cities. What many would today recognize as Spain’s “plaza culture” – typified by the Plazas Mayors, triumphal arches, and wide avenues, and the festivities that take place on them – was introduced to much of the peninsula from the 1500s onwards. This was in large part thanks to the Baroque-era focus on pageantry, and the monarchy’s encouragement of public celebrations. These new public spaces, placed in the centre of cities and towns, would be the focal point of Catholic processions and, later, secular, municipal carnivals and fiestas.
La Mercè, where the sacred and the profane blend
Unsurprisingly, industrialization impacted the custom. Not so much the building of them, which remains to this day mostly artisanal (and can take up to between a week and two months), but rather in their social position. The giants have always been expensive to make, and have thus required benefactors. As industrialists and merchants gathered wealth towards the end of the 19th century, they became the tradition’s main supporters, primarily through their financing of neighbourhood associations and their (secular) celebrations.
Shutterstock
David Ortega Baglietto
The industrial-era event which was to have the biggest positive impact on the giants was the 1902 La Mercè celebrations. La Mercè remains one of the city’s major events to this day. Every September, up to a million people attend the various concerts and cultural activities that take place throughout the city over a week.
Local historian Amadeu Carbó explains that when Our Lady of Mercy was proclaimed patroness of the diocese of Barcelona in 1868, thoughts turned immediately to a party. Primarily a religious festival, it became a vehicle for the sort of social classes who would be inspired to bring the Universal Exhibition to the city in 1888. The sacred and the profane were harmonised, and ever since La Mercè has remained a yearly celebration which acts as an economic development scheme, tourist attraction, and regionalist source of pride.
The 1902 edition hosted a special competition for the region’s best gegants wherein participants could win up to 1,000 pesetas. Competitors included the formidable Dragon of Vilafranca and members of the Robafaves ‘family’ of giants and capgrossos from the nearby town of Mataró.
Gegants Under Franco
Modernity was to make its negative impact on the gegants a little later. During the Second Republic, anything that seemed to celebrate monarchical rule or the feudal order (as the giants could be interpreted as doing) was highly suspicious. Later on, during the Civil War, many would be destroyed when churches, where many giants were stored, were heavily bombed. Franco’s Nationalists would interpret the gegants as being too closely associated to the sort of regionalism that they despised.
Albert Garrido
The dictatorship was a period of decline in many areas of life, and by the time of Franco’s death in 1975 the giants were in something of a crisis. This had partly been to do with increased urbanization and the hollowing out of traditional rural communities – these were where the practice had been preserved. Things weren’t much better in the cities. In Barcelona, there was one remaining workshop and store for gegants and capgrossos. El Ingenio, located on Carrer Rauric, was founded in 1835, and bought by Delfí Homs in 1920, whose family ran the business until his granddaughter's retirement in 2019. As part of heritage preservation efforts, the City Council bought the space in 2021, but it remains in a sad state of disrepair.
Post-Franco, energy was put into reinvigorating local customs, while a move towards a federal State meant that regional traditions, such as the giants, were not only recognised but supported by government and business. The First Congress of Traditional and Popular Culture, which would lead to strategic government support of folk traditions throughout the country, took place in 1982. ‘82 was also the year that Spain hosted the football World Cup, during the inaugral event of which gegants were included, which resulted in an uptick of interest and popularity.
Close Encounters of the Giant Kind
Another reason the tradition was able to survive was because the sculpting and modelling of religious figures had remained a desired skill for much of the 20th century. The religious influence had come full circle. As before, skills and desires from religious impulses helped to support a secular interest, especially as atheism gained traction.
A concurrent, European-wide resurgence in arts and crafts helped new Catalan geganters to learn the craft and new techniques. This coincided with the rebirth of the festas majors, such as La Mercè, which to this day combine the traditional with the contemporary. Gegants have played a prominent role in these events throughout Catalonia ever since. The layers of paper, paint and varnish of which the giants are made are a metaphor for the way in which the historical layers of the practice have been built up into a social structure, around which the past and the present coexist.
Where to See the Giants
The most common moment to see the giants is during a town or neighbourhood’s festa major. In Barcelona, these moments can be found via the city’s Agenda or via this interactive map. The society of giant makers hosts a calendar for the entire region. Giants also still tend to make an apperance during religious holidays such as the Eucharist and Easter processions. La Mercè takes place annually during the last week of September.
