LITMIR.BIZ

      Figure 3. The Maces in the Plaça Sant Pere in the first decade of the twentieth century. “Els pagesos a la barana”: the countrypeople seek safety and a good view behind the barana. Photo from Arxiu Luigi, Berga.

      The cavallets are the variety of hobbyhorse known in French as chevaux-jupons (horse-skirts). The brown horse, girded for battle in approximately late-medieval fashion with a red and yellow fringe, is made out of papier-mâché reinforced with plaster and suspended from the carrier’s shoulders at waist level. Tiny legs make the carrier appear to be riding in the saddle. The rider wears a helmet and is dressed like the turc with inverse colors. He carries a straight sword in his right hand and a flat wooden block strapped to his left palm.

      The Turcs i Cavallets appear only in the Patum in the plaça and are its first number. Their dance begins with a bright brassy march: they gallop out of City Hall, turn around, line up in two rows, and bow to the city council in the balcony. Then the music turns to a slower 2/4 time. The Turcs form an inner circle, the Cavallets an outer circle, and they skip clockwise, the last cavallet spinning on his axis. When the music reaches its cadence, each turc strikes the wooden block in the hand of the nearest cavallet with his scimitar. The melody and the blow are repeated three times. On the last repetition, the Cavallets strike the Turcs instead, and the latter kneel in a sign of submission.⁹

      The Turcs i Cavallets are a relatively open comparsa, and a few young women dance as turcs.

      MACES

      The “maces” are masked and horned devils in heavy red or green felt suits. Each carries a maça, a red-and-green pole topped with a metal drum full of pebbles that rattle when it is bounced. A painted devil’s face decorates the drum, and a fuet is affixed to the top. In addition to its connotations as a weapon, the maça is a convenient way of carrying pyrotechnia, and the bouncing motion helps to keep the fuet alight in the often-rainy season of Corpus: the salts have thus a technical as well as a symbolic raison d’etre.

      The Maces perform with music and a semblance of choreography at the noon Patum in the plaça: this music was not added until the 1950s, in yet another municipal moment of revitalizing and domesticating the Patum. During the night Patum, the passacarrcrs, and the Quatre Fuets (see below), they salt to the accompaniment of the Tabal alone. The four of them (eight at noon) stand in a long rectangle, two at each end. Their fuets are lit, and they begin to skip toward the opposite end of the rectangle, bouncing the maça up and down so that the sparks falling in the air describe thick arabesques, a favorite subject of Berguedan photographers. They move back and forth along the rectangle until a fuet explodes: then the devil falls to the ground.

      During the Patum in the plaça, there are two angels, Saint Michael and a smaller helper, who skip across the middle of the rectangle after each passing of the devils. When a devil falls, Saint Michael steps over him and, with his lance, gives him the coup de grâce, the angel helping with his short sword. The number is thus understood as a battle.

      The angels are called a separate comparsa, since it would be unseemly to group them with the devils, but because there are only two of them and their role is very minor, they don’t really count. They are generally played by pubescent boys or by women. They dress like the angels of the old Holy Week processions, winged medieval knights. Both wear blond curly wigs, Saint Michael with a silver helmet and the angel with a wreath of flowers. They have red velvet capes over white tunics embroidered with gold and the usual white stockings and espardenyes.

      The Maces are theoretically the same comparsa as the Plens, and there is significant overlap between those who salt the maces and those who dress the Plens. The Maces are somewhat fluid, dividing salts between themselves, and there are women among them. In the evening passacarrers and also during the Quatre Fuets, the official Maces begin the salt and then let other people take a turn, exchanging the maça after each crossing of the rectangle over and back.

      GUITES

      The guita or “kicker,” from an adjective applied to mules, is one of the mulasses or mule effigies common in Catalonia: these, in turn, are one local subgroup of the festival effigies we may call tarasques from the better-known Provençal example. Widespread in Languedoc and formerly in Castile, these creatures share several features: an appearance indeterminate between dragon and domestic animal; aggressive behavior (especially in relation to women) often enhanced by fireworks and snapping jaws; and legendary association with the origins of the city, stressing either agricultural fertility or defense against invasion (Dumont 1951; Very 1962, 51–76; Fabre and Camberogue 1977; Le Goff 1980; Gilmore 2002).