Building human tower at festival

One of the most interesting activities I encountered was Castell, The art of building human towers.This tradition which dates back as early as 1700’s in Catalonia.

During many festivals in Catalonia, it is common to have teams of acrobats or colles castellers building these phenomenal human structures.

While I was in Girona I was lucky enough to get the chance to visit the training centre of Marrecs De Sel, a local castel group  where I got to witness their training in action. I made this video above to give you a glimpse into what kind of training it takes to build these human structures.

Each human tower structure is thought out and planned with people assigned to parts of the tower where their strengths lay. Generally the stronger bigger people are at the bottom of the structure and the small children climb all the way to the top.

I even got to try being part of a mini human tower myself, it was hard enough to maintain concentration with a wall support and just one small child on my back, It really is impressive how everyone can work together to support each other to create these towers.

But it’s not just about building the tower up, To be successful a casteller must be fully built and deconstructed without falling apart. The current record for highest castell is 10 floors with 3 people on each level.

Thanks for sharing this on Pinterest 🙂