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).
Figure 4. The two Guites on either side of the barana during the calmer daytime Patum. The musicians’ balcony against the church and the Bar La Barana can be seen in the background. Photo by Luigi, Berga.
Berguedans often speak of the Guita in the singular, although since 1890 there have been two, because the second is in a sense a redoubling: both number and gender are indeterminate. Its body is a metal frame with wooden slats in the form of a half-barrel, with a light wooden rim which rides on the shoulders of the carriers. A long wooden neck, distinct to Berga and more proper to a giraffe than a mule, is held in a leather holster around the waist of a man under the front of the half-barrel; behind him, another man inside supports a transverse bar. Body and neck are covered with green canvas, with the shield of Berga emblazoned on each side. The head is a grinning green papier-mâché mule’s head of sorts, with ears and a short horsehair mane. Inside its jaws is a metal support for three fuets, and a bell hangs just below the head.
The small guita needs at least eight carriers, the large one more. The cap de colla or another responsible person goes in front to lead the animal and direct the man inside, who controls the mobile neck. The weight is mostly supported by the outside carriers, who take the rim on their shoulders.
The guites come out for the Wednesday and Saturday passacarrers and for the Patums in the plaça, and no one has ever tried to set music to them. They chase the crowd with the fuets in their mouths (one fuet for the noon Patum and the passacarrers, three for the night Patum), and move through the available space as the spirit of the moment moves them. Each guita, however, has its characteristic gestures.
The Guita Grossa (Big Guita) runs through the plaça, then lowers its neck and spins so that the surrounding crowd has to fall to the ground to avoid getting hit. It lifts its head to the first-floor balconies and rattles its fuets against the metal rails, forcing the spectators back. Its most typical play is against the barana, the broad stone barrier rising along the north side of the plaça. The guitaire in front jumps up on the barana, which has crowds of people leaning against it; he takes the neck of the Guita and runs it up and down the length of the barana. The crowd ducks down, away from the fuets: at the bottom, some brave soul always clings to the lamppost long enough to get burned before jumping down. Some people bring old umbrellas—often full of holes from a previous Patum—to engage the Guita in combat. The Guita draws back as it is about to burst, and after the explosion takes a few humping steps forward, swinging its head back and forth and ringing its bell.
The Guita Xica (Little Guita) is also called the Guita Boja (Mad Guita) because of its greater speed and flexibility. Like the Grossa, the Xica runs and spins in the plaça; the crowd chases it and has to react quickly. The Xica’s neck is too short for much play with balconies and barana. Rather, it specializes in invading inappropriate spaces: it will go behind the barana, where the crowd is huddling for protection, or up in the musicians’ balcony or inside a bar or up the stairs of City Hall. There is greater scope for improvisation during the passacarrers, so the Xica often has more protagonism there than in the plaça.
The mule is a richly evocative animal in the Catalan mountains. Stronger, hardier, and more surefooted than a horse, it was of great practical importance in forestry, farming, hauling, and even mining. At the same time, its obstinacy and temper were proverbial. It was associated with disruptive, nonreproductive female sexuality in a host of proverbs: “Do not trust the back of a mule or the front of a woman” (Amades 1950–69, 2, 1200); its uneasy presence in the farmyard was like that of the young wife in the household. Several blasons populaires advise the prudent man not to get a wife or a mule from certain villages: they were foreign elements that had to be introduced with great case. In early-modern elite culture in Catalonia, it was the most common simile for manual laborers, who required a strong hand to be kept obedient (Amelang 1986, 150–51). Its particular untrustworthiness was that of workers and women, whose apparent domestication could not be counted on: “a meek mule kills its master” (Gomis 1910, 162). Catalan landowners could not maintain their estates without workers, wives, or mules, but each was felt to threaten the precariously enclosed order and to require repression accordingly. The name change of Berga’s Guita—unique among Catalan mules—from mulassa to mulaguita and finally, by the early twentieth century, simply guita—highlights the mule’s disruptive qualities.
The guitaires are divided into two comparses of about twenty young men each, but dress the same, in black smocks with red felt fringe, and battered shapeless hats to protect themselves from the sparks. These smocks or bates are workmen’s clothing, and distinguish the guitaires from all other comparsa members.
ÀLIGA
The Àliga (eagle) is a papier-mâché and plaster effigy on a wooden armature with a grille in its breast for its carrier, concealed to the legs, to see through. It is painted a dark greenish brown and is meticulously sculpted, with an elegant curve to its head and neck, scalelike “feathers,” and a long, straight tail. It wears a crown—at present that of the Counts of Barcelona rather than the Kings of Spain—and carries carnations or boxwood tied with Catalan-flag ribbon in its beak; in the old days
