Borinots
Castell: Human tower
A
"castell" (castle)
is a human tower built
traditionally at festivals in Catalonia, Spain.
At these festivals, several teams attempt to build
and then dismantle its structure. Such "castell" is considered
a success when assembly and disassembly can be done in complete succession.
The arrangement of castellers can be into a multi-tiered structure and the highest has a height spanning of 9 or 10 people from ground up.
The assembly is complete once all castellers have climbed into their designated places, and the "enxaneta" - a little kid - climbs into place at the top and raises one open hand, then, he climbs down the other side, after which the remaining levels descend in highest to lowest order until all have reached safety.
During 2024, I followed the Barcelona Sants team, called Borinots. They allowed me to follow the journey during weekly rehearsals, Sunday festivals, take intimate portraits and hear stories and what this tradition is about.
The sense of belonging to a group, keep the tradition alive, the idea of self-correlating to build every tower at every rehearsal is the main challenge.
After the absence in 2020 and 2022 due to Covid, finally in October 2024, the biennial championship took place.
It was a special moment after the lockdown period… The champion was the team of Villafranca del Penedès.
Barcelona Sants finished 10th in a 42 overall team.
Layout of different human towers.
Base group of a 9 floors with 4 people in each floor
1st floor of a 4d9f
Ground floor of a 7 floors with 7 people in each floor
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Borinots group was created by Miquel in 1993 and nowadays has more than 300 members. Every Tuesday and Friday the team rehears in the neighborhood school gym adapted especially with a 30 m2 motored net to follow the construction of every stage.
There are more than 75 "collas" over Catalunya
On November 2010, castells were declared by UNESCO to be amongst the Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Human.
These images are my respect to their strength, balance, courage to build these amazing human towers.
