Unprecedented. A nine-story pillar, a challenge to the laws of physics that seemed impossible just a few years ago, was completed this Sunday in the Vila de Vilafranca square (Alt Penedès) during the Sant Fèlix festival by a casteller group accustomed to breaking the barriers of the casteller world. The Castellers de Vilafranca will go down in history as the first group to complete the nine-story pillar with folre, manilles, and puntals. A stratospheric construction, with a triple reinforcement structure at the base, requiring more than 200 castellers to make it a reality. Madness.
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“What we have done is a damn madness,” said Àngel Grau, the cap de colla of Els Verds, euphoric and proud, great dominators of the casteller scene over the last decade, capable of mobilizing more than 600 shirts this Sunday at their main festival. “Maybe we won’t see it again,” warned the leader of the Castellers de Vilafranca, the number one favorites to win the next Concurs de Castells de Tarragona, the first Sunday of October. If you can and have a ticket or a way to get one, don’t miss it.
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The first nine-story pillar in history overshadowed what will almost certainly be remembered as the best Sant Fèlix of all time, with sixteen extra-range castells, the most difficult, including four ten-story castells, the most colossal constructions. Alongside those of Vilafranca, a tremendous recital by Colla Vella and Colla Joves dels Xiquets de Valls (Alt Camp), eternal rivals of the Plaça del Blat, and Colla Jove de Tarragona. An euphoric, almost perfect Sant Fèlix, in which all the groups won in their own way this Sunday. The sweet moment of the casteller phenomenon is confirmed, admirably recovered from the blow dealt by the pandemic (2020).
The highlight of the day, however, was reserved for the Castellers de Vilafranca. In the pre-castell rally, the group vowed to conquer their Everest. For the first time in history, Els Verds achieved what no one else had: completing the nine-story pillar with folre, manilles, and puntals.
La Jove de Tarragona completed their best performance ever (50 years) by completing the 3d10, the 5d9, the cathedral, the 2d9 with folre and manilles, and the eight-story pillar. The lilacs have, for the first time, a woman as cap de colla, Gina Fort, only 30 years old, still an exception among the largest groups. In her first year, she threatens to break the ceiling of a group that will fight to be among the top 12 groups in the next Concurs de Castells, as they did in the last edition. La Jove de Tarragona, with a cap de tronc, Jordi Crespo, exuberant after the performance, can proudly say that at the Sant Fèlix of the nine-story pillar, they were the only group to complete all their castells.
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Great performance by the two groups of Xiquets de Valls, the casteller kilometer zero. Colla Vella completed the 4d9 net, loaded the 4d10, a colossal construction that fell when the completion seemed possible, and confidently completed the 4d9 with the pillar. Vella’s love affair with the 4-structure – the number of castells per floor – was completed with an eight-story pillar they managed to complete when it seemed impossible, with the tower on the verge of breaking.
At the other end of the Vila square, Joves de Valls, eternal enemies of Vella, also completed the 4d9 net, the nine-story tower with folre and manilles, and loaded the 2d8 net, an extremely fragile tower without any additional support at the base. The eight-story pillar crowned a huge performance by the diables.
This Sunday’s diada is a new turning point for the casteller universe. No matter how you look at it. The Vila square is known as the most casteller square because it accumulates feats without interruption for more than 250 years of history. Here, castells have never stopped being performed for the main festival (Sant Fèlix), not even when castells were in full crisis, poorly regarded, with little mobilization capacity and rather modest feats.
The square was packed to the brim during the four hours that the performance of the four best groups of the moment lasted, with permission from Minyons de Terrassa, aside from casteller competitiveness. Neither the intense heat, with the thermometer climbing to 33ºC, a temperature recorded by Professor Òscar Saladié’s sensors (URV), in a project studying the adaptation of castells to the climate crisis and proposing schedule changes, was a deterrent.
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