ABSTRACT
Human tower building castells is a 200-year-old traditional sport where hundred-plus men, women, and children gather to build breathtaking human formations. Traditionally related to the working classes, castells’ main function is to provide neighborhood solidarity and intergenerational past time. Lately, the social base and ethos of the sport have been deployed as a Catalan symbol amid the region’s pro-independence debate. The sport is a rare example of grassroots revival and boom. During the Transition from the Franco dictatorship in the mid-1970s, only seven castells teams existed in Catalonia; today, there are more than a hundred, counting tens of thousands of performers and sympathizers. This chapter will account for a traditional sport’s spectacular success in the twenty-first century through the following factors: (1) the integration of women in the 1980s; (2) the gentrification of popular culture and castells’ opening to the middle classes; (3) the 2008 economic crisis and its impact, where people sought cheap forms of sociality and past time; (4) the post-2010 pro-independence turn in Catalonia and the involvement of popular culture in nation building; (5) processes of modern sportification and a shift “from ritual to record”; and (6) the boom of tourism and heritage industries. This chapter will assess the developments that were necessary for castells’ successful modernization, including the conflicts and controversies some of these processes generated.
