Castells in Tarragona: Human Towers and Community

The square in front of the town hall balcony is the traditional stage for castells, the human towers that define the public life of many Catalan towns. In Tarragona, this tradition extends to the cathedral square, where on Wednesday evenings, the air fills with the sound of the gralla, a wind instrument that sets the rhythm for the tower’s construction. The structure itself is a study in hierarchy and support. The pinya, the close-packed supporting base of people, spreads the load at ground level. The tronc, the tower’s stacked trunk of climbers, rises from it, with the youngest participants completing the upper part of the structure. This arrangement is not merely architectural; it is a physical manifestation of how the community holds itself together. The knowledge required to build these towers is not written in manuals but is passed down through practice, generation to generation, within the amateur groups that form the backbone of the culture.

The Architecture of Belonging

The castle of the body is a shared practice that makes belonging tangible. When Miquel Ferré joined the Xiquets del Serrallo, a local human-tower group, in 1994, he did so first out of a sentiment of belonging to his neighborhood, the Serrallo, and only later out of an understanding of the castells themselves. He was sixteen, wearing a navy blue shirt for the first time, in a group founded in 1988 that was deeply rooted in the local social fabric. The fishermen who made up a significant part of the group had specific needs; they grumbled if rehearsals ran late because they had to set out to sea at dawn. In that early period, the technical precision of the tower was secondary to the social cohesion of the group. The pinya would close its ranks with a pragmatic instruction to "round out" and "come closer," a call that became the origin of local jokes and nicknames. For Ferré, the love for the Serrallo preceded the love for the castells. This sequence is crucial. The tower is not just a performance; it is a container for local identity, where the specificities of a neighborhood, its trades, its humor, and its speech, are preserved and reinforced through collective effort.

The inclusion in the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO in 2010 recognized this global significance, but the local reality remains grounded in the specific dynamics of each group. The traditional setting in the square is not a backdrop but a requirement. It forces the practice into the public sphere, where the community can witness and participate. The gralla’s melody, playing before, during, and after the performance, provides a sonic thread that binds the individual climbers to the collective rhythm. This is how a shared practice makes belonging tangible: it requires physical presence, mutual trust, and a shared aesthetic and rhythmic language that is learned only by doing.

The Organizing Work Behind the Tower

Behind the visible structure of the castell is a complex web of organizing work that sustains the group. Miquel Ferré recalls a precarious period for the Xiquets del Serrallo in 2003 and 2004. Ferré notes that if just five or six core members had left, the group would have vanished. The struggle was not just about numbers but about infrastructure. For years, the group lacked a dignified rehearsal space. They practiced in front of the church of Sant Pere, in the old exchange, on Santa Tecla street, in the sheds, and even inside the port. The dependence on weather and the inability to use safety nets were constant problems. It was not until March 2017 that this struggle for a permanent space ended. This history reveals that the "tradition" is not a static object but a fragile institution that requires constant maintenance, funding, and physical space.

The "Tarragona, ciutat de castells" initiative, organized by the Conselleria de Cultura i Festes of the Tarragona City Council, represents a modern layer of this organizing work. The published June 24–October 4, 2026 program aimed to project the casteller tradition as a key referent of the city. It included Wednesday performances in front of the Tarragona Cathedral, offering citizens and visitors the opportunity to experience the culture in a unique heritage setting. This municipal support, alongside the collaboration of the Patronat Municipal de Turisme, helps to preserve and disseminate the practice. It combines tradition, collective effort, and social cohesion, reinforcing the city's identity. The organizing work is thus twofold: the internal maintenance of the group by its members and the external support provided by civic institutions that recognize the cultural value of the practice.

Shifting Roles and Generational Change

The transmission of knowledge within a group has historically followed a specific path, but the roles within that transmission are evolving. Gina Fort, a 30-year-old physiotherapist, became the first woman to serve as cap de colla, the leader, of a casteller group in Tarragona. She was elected to lead the Colla Jove Xiquets de Tarragona in January 2026. Fort joined the group in 2004, thanks to a friend of her sister, and has since passed through all positions. Her election highlights a shift in who holds the technical and organizational authority within the groups.

Fort’s perspective offers a nuanced view of this change. She states that any woman has the same capabilities as a man to assume the role of cap de colla. However, she acknowledges that in the casteller world, there are still those who believe a woman's voice is not as valid as a man's. Her reported experience identifies an internal disagreement. The tradition is not monolithic; it contains tensions regarding gender and leadership. Fort notes that while there are few women in technical leadership roles in top-tier groups, there has been progress in other positions, such as presidents or heads of the pinya. The Colla Jove has been quite pioneering in this regard. Fort’s experience also touches on the practical challenges of balancing family life with such a demanding role, noting that for women, the phase of pregnancy and postpartum can be a limiting factor in a way that it is not for men. These are Fort’s reported observations about participation and leadership, rather than a universal account of women’s experience. The group’s support for her is a sign of change, but the broader community is still adjusting to the idea that leadership is not inherently male.

The Science of Stability

The physical reality of the castell is also the subject of scientific inquiry. The "Towers of Science" project at the Universitat Rovira i Virgili (URV) aims to disseminate science by analyzing human towers from disciplines such as chemistry, physics, and sociology. This project, which received funding from the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology (FECYT) and the company Repsol, with collaboration from the city councils of Reus, Tarragona, and Valls, seeks to show that tower building involves a wide range of scientific disciplines.

A 2020 academic report examines castells from a mechanical point of view. It focuses on the stability of a pilar, a single column of climbers and the simplest structure in castells. The authors propose three complementary approaches: an N-link pendulum as a first dynamical model, the response of the castellers as a control problem, and a static analysis to capture the feasibility of a given configuration. They include preliminary simulations that seem to match with the qualitative perceptions that castellers have of a castell. This scientific approach does not replace the traditional knowledge passed down through practice, but it adds a layer of understanding. It helps to understand the mechanisms that allow a castell to be built and the factors that may cause its collapse. Safety is crucial in the performance of castells, and the study explores mechanical understanding; it does not establish a measured reduction in injuries. The integration of science and tradition is a continuing possibility for the practice, offering new ways to teach and reinterpret the physical demands of the tower.

Continuing Possibilities

The castells of Tarragona continue to evolve while maintaining their core structure. The past 2026 program listed performances by several groups, including the Colla Jove Xiquets de Tarragona, Xiquets de Tarragona, Castellers de Sant Pere i Sant Pau, Xiquets del Serrallo, and Nois de la Torre. Those advertised performances were free and were scheduled to take place in the Pla de la Seu, in front of the cathedral. The listing gave July 29 and August 12 for Xiquets del Serrallo, with a possible change to the latter date. This is historical program information, not a current visitor schedule. This uncertainty is a small reminder that the tradition is living and responsive to the immediate context.

The shared practice of castells makes belonging tangible across generations by requiring physical participation, mutual support, and a shared cultural language. It is a practice that is both deeply local and internationally recognized. The organizing work behind it, from the internal maintenance of groups to the external support of municipal and scientific institutions, ensures its continuity. The shifting roles of leadership, as seen in the election of Gina Fort, show that the tradition is capable of adapting to new social realities. The scientific inquiry into its mechanics adds a new dimension to the understanding of the practice. The castells are not just a performance; they are a community, a history, and a future, all held together by the weight of the people who build them.

Three kinds of support beneath a tower

The organizational history, the performance calendar and the mechanical model answer different questions. Reading them together is useful precisely because they cannot stand in for one another. A tower can be physically feasible while the group lacks a rehearsal home; a city program can provide visibility without resolving an internal disagreement.

Three kinds of support beneath a tower
Support	Documented example	Limit
A place to rehearse	Ferré's account of the Serrallo group's changing rehearsal spaces.	A retrospective account of one group. ^[5]
Public organization	The municipal June–October 2026 program.	A past program, not a current event listing. ^[3]
Mechanical understanding	The cited study models a pilar through complementary approaches.	A model is not evidence of measured injury reduction. ^[6]

The comparison places responsibility with identifiable institutions and participants instead of an abstract claim that a whole city trusts one another. Fort's account adds another issue: who can hold technical authority within a group. Her reported experience belongs alongside the physical description of the tower, because participation includes the opportunity to lead as well as the ability to support.