movement of two cloth-covered farmyard monsters, which scatter the public as they engage with them.
The Comparses and Their Performances
The individual numbers of the Patum comprise effigies or masked figures and a prescribed dance or set of movements. The historical term for these numbers was entremesos: in contempory Catalan they are usually called comparses, from comparèixer, to appear. Each comparsa is controlled by a small group of people—overwhelmingly male—and a cap de colla (head of the gang), who distribute the salts (here, the turns as performer) among themselves and those upon whom they choose to confer the privilege. There are nine comparses plus the final tirabol, appearing always in the following order even in acts in which not all elements appear:
1. Tabal
2. Turcs i Cavallets
3. Maces
4. Guites
5. Àliga
6. Nans Veils
7. Gegants
8. Nans Nous
9. Plens
10. Tirabol
Apart from the Tabal, which has a framing role, and the final tirabol, a hybrid, the comparses can be divided into balls and salts. A ball (dance) is choreographed and accompanied by music, hence fixed in time and space. These include the Turcs i Cavallets, the Àliga, the two sets of dwarfs, and the giants. The salts or coses de foc (things of fire) are the Guites, the Maces, and the Plens: comparses accompanied by the Tabal, with music later incorporated in the Plens and the midday Maces. All feature the use of fuets, slow-burning firecrackers about one and a half feet long, which trail sparks until the flame hits the charge at the bottom. The effigies, masks, and costumes of these comparses are much less well made than those of the dances: they suffer fire damage and require constant repair. Their motion, although it consists of prescribed gestures and movements, is less fixed than that of the balls. It is timed not to the music (if there is any), but to the burning of the fuet, which takes about three minutes, depending on humidity. The verb used for the motion is saltar, which means “to jump” or “to leap” in modern Catalan, but in the Patum retains something of its old Latin sense of disorderly, unholy dancing.7
TABAL
The Tabal is a big red bass drum with the shield of Berga emblazoned on its sides, carried by a man in seventeenth-century dress: red velvet slitsleeved coat over a yellow blouse and red velvet knee breeches, white lace cuffs and collar, yellow sash, white stockings, buckled black shoes, and a broad-brimmed red velvet hat with a white plume. He plays a slow even beat: “PA-TUM,” which speeds up slightly to “pa-TUM TUM TUM TUM TUM” before a pause. The Tabal’s role is twofold: to announce and open the Patum and to accompany certain other comparses. Its sound is penetrating: the verb atabalar means “to bewilder someone,” so they have el cap com un bòmbol, a head like a drum—the older phrase being un cap com un tabal (Alcover and Moll 1927–62, entry “tabal”).
On the Sunday after Ascension Day, the Tabaler comes out of City Hall and processes through Berga to announce the city council’s decision to have Patum. On the Wednesday before Corpus Christi, he leads the giants along the same route: this is the opening of the Patum. On Wednesday and Saturday night he leads the passacarrers—or, to speak accurately, opens it up. He foregoes his fancy dress and yields the Tabal to a series of deputies as it passes through the streets, because this is a very long night.
During the Patum in the plaça he is located in a small balcony of his own, and accompanies the coses de foc: the Maces, the Guites, and the Plens. There is only one tabaler at a time, and for the past two hundred years individual families have controlled the role for a few generations each. The present Tabaler is the son and grandson of the last two, and will leave it to his younger brother.
Figure 2. The tabal at the head of the Corpus Christi procession on the Carrer Major, ca. 1960, followed by turcs i cavallets, maces, and Guita Grossa. Photo by Luigi, Berga.
TURCS I CAVALLETS
Literally, Turks and little horses. This is a simple variant of the Moors-and-Christians dances common in southern Europe; on the Catalan coast in the early modern period the Turks were the relevant threat and the entremes seems to have travelled inland.8 The turcs wear no masks but show their identity by turbaned helmets and wooden scimitars. They wear flowered jackets and loose, full, red knee breeches, with white stockings and espardenyes de set vetes, the rope-soled cloth shoes laced to the knee traditionally worn by Catalan mountain people.
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
