Human towers called “castells” ( castles, in English ), are based in a great teamwork.

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This tradition comes from the North East of Spain, from a certain area near Tarragona, and it’s performed during local festivals or special meetings, for example the contest you see in these pictures. Many “colles” ( teams ) compete during a whole weekend. The towers they build get a punctuation depending on its difficulty and towers that have been loaded and unloaded get more points that the ones that have only been loaded. You may wonder what happens with the tower if it has been only loaded…well, the answer is very simple and unpleasant. They just fall down. Usually, nobody gets harmed because there is a kind of “mattress” formed by people and called “pinya” ( pine cone, the reason is obvious ). You can see it on the next pic.

This is the same castle after being loaded, the child called “anxeneta” climbs to the top and raises an arm to indicate that the castle has been loaded. Children are essential for the castle and because of the risk involving its building there has been a lot of controversy about if children should take part in a castle.

Little by little, people climb over their team members until they reach their position. People at the upper part of the castle must be rather lightweighted and people at the lower part tend to be stronger.

A closer look at the castle:

A castle almost ready for the “anxeneta” to raise an arm…

Each castle has a name depending on the number of people forming each floor and the number of floors. The children at the top are considered as three floors. The “pinya” or base doesn’t count as a floor. So, what you have in the last picture is a 4 of 8 (”4 de 8″).

There are many variations of the typical castle I’ve described here, for example there is a pillar, build by only one person each floor. Or castles that have a pillar inside, etc…

Sometimes pillars on local holidays walk and go down stairs. It’s very impressive.

A video:

Credits:
Pictures: Sabrina’s friend
Video: The respective owner at Youtube

HELADO DE TURRÓN

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This is the summer version of the typical Christmas desert: turrón, which has been eaten in Spain since the sixteenth century. Its origin comes from the arabic domination, when Spain was known as Al-Andalus.

Turrón is made of almonds ( the main ingredient ), sugar, honey and egg white ( albumen ). Nowadays, for Christmas there are many varieties such chocolate, yolk, coconut…but the original one is made from almond. Its shape is rectangular, like a tablet 2 o 3 cm thick.

There are two almond types of “turrón”, the hard version and the soft one. The hard is called Alacant/Alicante and the soft is called Xixona/Jijona. The last one is very oily.

The quality depends on the amount of almonds used. Real Alacant version must be at least the 60% almond. Xixona must be 64% to be considered real Xixona.

ZARZUELA DE PESCADO

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This is the result when you fry some monkfish, “Dublin bay prawn” as the dictionary says… but we call them “cigalas” in Spanish, and you mix it with previously boiled clams. Sauce is made of tomato, garlic, parsley and saffron.
Saffron is widely used in fish dishes, in paella for example. Nevertheless, some alternatives exist.

The name Zarzuela may come from the lyric-dramatic genre that alternates between spoken and sung/danced scenes. This is also the name of the Palace of the King and Queen of Spain in Madrid.