Carnaval Prothesis: Technologies of Sensory Disorientation

The putatively normative sovereignty of seny, which might be glossed as the self-attributed Catalan complex of probity, common sense, sober diligence and reason, is inversely articulated during the brief but intense reign of Sa Majestat el Rei Carnestoltes, whose familiar titles are “king of the senseless” and “king of the shameless.” The body of this king—profligate, abusive and debauched— presides over the not-so-docile bodies of a grotesque, burlesque populace employing disorderly technologies to produce a week of avalot, multitudinous and noisy tumult.

Carnaval ends Ash Wednesday with rituals of the dead king’s body. Flanked by an honor guard and surrounded by wailing concubines, some holding bouquets of phallic vegetables; a stream of townspeople pass the stiff body, a few old women reach down to playfully touch the still erect penis, and then a funeral cortege leads to the central plaça for a solemnly delivered but satiric testament ending with the fiery immolation of the “sardine” as the king’s body is called in it’s final state.

Superimposed upon the paths of ancient streambeds, the ramblas or pedestrian ways and plaçes of Catalan towns channel the currents and eddies of human foot traffic. This built space facilitates movement between points but also a concentration of social interactions and a specific normative embodied experience. During Carnestoltes (or Carnaval) however, sensory experience is systematically disoriented and redirected via manipulations of this built environment which becomes populated by a profusion of artificial bodies and part-human cyborgs exemplifying a more generalized use of prosthetics that extend the instrumental and sensory body and serve as technologies of enchantment. The sensory-semantic circuits engage satire, political critique, debauchery, and communal intimacy, routing them through these material technologies. Apart from visual, auditory and olfactory disorientations, the body-in-the-world is subject to a host of extraordinary sensory experience. Masks and costumes constrain, focus and embolden movement; epic food fights empastifar the body with oozing meringue or pelt it with hard candy; the pyrotechnic artifices of leaping devils shower bodies with sparks and shock them with deafening explosions; hidden bodies suddenly appear, launching clouds of feathers. At any moment one’s own body may be hailed into the foreground, held captive by unseen hands, and subjected to a satiric tirade, causing it to flush with vergonya, the embodied sensation of embarrassment.

Carnaval in Vilanova i la Geltrú

During the four decades of the Franco dictatorship, Carnaval was banned and was not celebrated anywhere in Spain. Except in Vilanova i la Geltrú. In the first years of the ban, a group of Vilanovins "found themselves walking the route" of l’Arrivo or the procession of the arrival of the King on the appointed day and surreptitiously carried out the core rituals of the holiday. As this became progressively more blatant, the mayor made a special request to Madrid to allow an exception. Surprisingly, the request was granted with the stipulation that the wearing of masks would be forbidden (as unacceptable obstacles to the panoptic/disciplinary gaze?). So Carnaval here has a special quality, not merely of having claims to an unbroken tradition, but having an especially acute savor for subversion.



Thursday: Dijous Gras: La Merengada

Children’s meringue fight
An enormous amount of sugar and eggwhites are expended on this day. This conspicuous destruction of luxury goods brings to mind the Kwakiutl potlatch, but I don't find any evidence that it is a status war, rather an orgiastic revel in the sensory experience of high doses of sugar and sticky, sweet smelling bodies. The sticky procession ranged all over town for hours, smearing everything in its path and ending with a gran empastifada where quantities of merenga were launched from balconies onto the eager celebrants.






Waiting for a meringue empasted pinyata to drop.

Midnight. Adult’s merengada. Taking place on the 25th anniversary of a failed military coup, the combatants in white with black tricorn hats represent the Civil Guards who held the government at gunpoint for 24 hours. A target of mockery now, the event was at the time terrifying to a populace who had but recently emerged from dictatorship.






Friday: L’Arrivo and l’arrivolució

The diables lead the procession of l'Arrivo. Their chief invited me to accompany them as they prepared in their lair and as they blazed a path for the cercavila (procession). Unlike the mass-produced devil suits worn in some Spanish towns, these suits have been designed and made locally for at least a century and are a great source of pride and aethetic appreciation. Their heavy cloth also protects the diables from burns. After many seasons, the suits shown below will be retired this summer while the new ones, two years in the making, are inargurated.


Diables suit up in their locale


Loading explosive petards into bags. The chief called for silence and announced "I want everyone to remember there's a very real danger these things could explode". Then he laughed and the diables erupted "Que guai!" (how cool!).









Inversions of power relationships and mockery of authority are elements of carnaval that stretch back into the Roman winter festival of Saturnalia and are still present in many carnaval celebrations. In Vilanova i la Geltrú, nearly every element of carnaval is designed to make some social critique, most often through mockery, and focusing most relentlessly on government and business figures ranging from the local, regional, national to international. Some of it is gentle teasing: the Ajuntament or municipal government depicted as Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. Others more biting such as depicting the conservative party (the PP) as Franco era fascists but with fake buttocks and penises extending from their pants.




The “sermon” of Sa Majestat el Rei Carnestoltes was a vulgar screed skewering the whole “shitty” town and its craven, boring inhabitants. In fact, this year the king refused to come but broadcast his disdainful attack from the nearby (rival) town of Sitges on a huge screen in the plaça. The Arrival (l’Arrivo) of the King itself, was taken over in a mock military coup by black-shirted “Arrivolucionary Hordes” whose General explained how the town had offended the king with their half-assed preparations and then set about “executing” giant puppets depicting political "enemies" by shooting them off the façade of city hall with an outsized blunderbuss. This is black humor considering that many living Spaniards lost a parent or grandparent either during the civil war or by being subsequently executed by the vindictive Generalissimo Franco.







Sa Majestat el Rei Carnestoltes: "Ciutat de merde!"

Saturday: L’arribada del Caramel

Caramel is the children’s Carnaval King. His arrival featured his confection by a crew of pastry chefs followed by a procession.









Moixó Foguer

Moixó Foguer is a carnaval personage dating from the middle ages in this part of Catalunya. A nude body covered with honey and feathers who leaps forth from a box carried by plumed beings to “scandalize” the populace and launch a blizzard of feathers over them. He is accompanied by the Xerraire, (gossip, chatterer, jabberer) a tall, dark, masked figure who seizes a person from the crowd and satirically describes their characteristics. I learned this by being his victim. I was derided as a mussol, literally an owl, but in Catalan having the figurative sense of a slow-witted dullard. The previous week the local paper had soberly reported that Moixó’s feathers had passed sanitary inspection for Bird Flu.






Bal dels Malcasats

This is a street drama enacting the (timeless) squabbles of mismatched couples whose dialogue serves as a vehicle for the social criticism of events of the recent past. As the couples clash, the "mayor," the "bishop," and the "sea captain" serve as interlocutors. The malcasats continued their dance throughout the day, stopping at various plaçes to perform their farce.





The Mayor intervenes after a Spanish lady complained that her elderly Catalan husband's "apparatus" doesn't work, an ideal lead-in for jibes directed toward failures of local government.

Sunday: Les Comparses: la guerra dolça
Twelve-thousand dancers, seventy-five tons of candy

What Vilanovins consider the most unique and impressive aspect of their Carnaval are the comparses a costumed couples dance in which each group of 50 or more identically clad couples dance their way to the main plaça, all the while pelting members of other groups with caramels. In the main plaça the groups face off in turn, beginning with a dance and then unleashing the mother of all food fights. This year 12,000 dancers participated and threw 75 tons, yes I did say 75 tons of caramels, whose purchase has a measurable regional economic effect. An old-timer told me that the war was originally between the fishermen and port dwellers versus the bourgeois of the town center. Two weeks later the streets were still sticky.



The small colored things in the air are caramels, the women are holding their shawls over their heads for protection. None-the-less, I saw a few people with eye-patches the following week.



City workers clear aside the carpet of caramels after each dance

Monday: Vidalet

Children's last day of revelry.



Balana Moa models the mantó she wore for the comparsa organized by her school.

Vidalot

The last night of revelry before Lent. Groups of costumed celebrants lead noisy processions from bar to bar.






Tuesday: L’Enterro

Funerary rituals of the dead King.




Ploranyeres loudly weep and lament their lost pleasure with the king.

Caramel wrappers are stuck to the king's shoes, evidence that he did come to Vilanova afterall, and probably danced the comparses


Photos end here because my camera battery died before the procession to the Testament, fiery conflagration and barrage of fireworks. In any case my fingers were greasy from the barbecued herrings, and I've left out many other elements of carnaval which, for this week at least, approaches being a total social phenomena, appearing to effect nearly every person and nearly every institution with transformative force.

S.M.C. R.I.P
(until next year)