Tarragona, a Catalan town 60 miles south of Barcelona, holds an annual summer festival with a spellbinding and death-defying main attraction: human towers.
Every year, thousands of people head to the town square to watch teams assemble massive towers, called castells, using their own bodies.
A primera ronda, descarreguem el 9d8 #SantMagi2015 #castellers pic.twitter.com/Ax5FCrocPV
— Colla Jove Tarragona (@JoveDeTarragona) August 19, 2015
Each tower starts with a base, or pinya, which helps to keep the upper layers steady. It also acts as a safety net -- just in case the tower collapses.
(6) LES COLS DE LA JOVE: primer 5d9f descarregat l'any 2014, #castellers pic.twitter.com/94lWqgbxEO
— Colla Jove Tarragona (@JoveDeTarragona) August 19, 2015
After the pinya is assembled fully, the rest of the team begins to move steadily into their pre-designated positions on the tower. Once everyone is in place, the enxaneta, who is usually a child, clambers to the top of the castell.
And when the enxaneta holds four fingers to the sky (signifying the four stripes of the Catalan flag), spectators know the structure is complete. Then, the equally arduous work of dismantling the castell can begin.
Pilar de 7 amb folre. És el primer que ha vist descarregat Les Cols en l'època moderna #SantMagi2015 #castellers pic.twitter.com/7KdHlySJce — Colla Jove Tarragona (@JoveDeTarragona) August 19, 2015
Tarragona's mayor, Josep Felix Ballesteros, lauded the festival -- which celebrates Tarragona's patron saint -- as a valuable expression of Catalan culture. "It attracts a lot of people and a lot of tourists who begin to know that the castles come from a long tradition," he said.
One structure, created by the local team Colla Jove Xiquets de Tarragona, involved three separate columns and clocked in at nine people tall.