Building castles in the air...

    Catalunya is famous for many things from art and architecture to poetry and even paella.
    Oh yeah, and castles.
    Human castles.
    A few days ago one of the organizations in Reus that makes human castles celebrated its 30th anniversary by - what else - building a human castle. Other organizations from around Catalunya showed up to build their own castles as part of the celebration, which took place in the plaza in front of city hall. Several thousand people gathered in the plaza to watch the festivities, which went on for a couple of hours starting at around 8 p.m.
    The castles are remarkable for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that this is a uniquely Catalunyan pastime. I don't know when this castle-building tradition began but I do know that it requires not only strength but an incredible amount of teamwork to build one that is several stories tall. It requires pride as well, enough pride in yourself and your mates that you will not, no matter what, let your teammates down.
    It also requires you to trust everyone in the group.
    If you are one of the people on the upper levels of a human castle you have to trust that the people below you are not going to let you fall 40 or 50 feet to the pavement. If you are the person who climbs to the very top, usually a very young and very lightweight boy or girl, that trust has to be absolute.
    It's breathtaking to watch the castles being built, and I mean that literally. All around me people were holding their breath as the members of the organizations scrambled from the base of the castle to the various levels, going higher and higher. When someone slipped, even for an instant, there was a collective gasp from the crowd. When the last person reached the top and waved the traditional white handkerchief to show that he or she had done so, you could hear people in the crowd finally starting to breathe normally again.
    Truly, it's an exciting thing to watch.
    My only complaint about that night: The plaza was so crowded that I couldn't get as close as I wanted to in order to get some good photos of the castle building but I managed to get a few to give you an idea of what it was like.

This castle was made by the organization celebrating its 30th anniversary.

As you can see, they kept building it higher and higher.

These guys are members of another castle-building organization.

And this is a castle built by yet another group.

Building a castle takes strength, coordination, teamwork, pride and a lot of trust...

...especially if you are the one climbing to the very top.