La Mercé

La Mercé is a festival that took place the 3rd week of September. It used to be a religious holiday but is now just a bunch of concerts, parades, and traditional events. The picture on the left is of ´castelles´which means human castles. I wasn´t able to capture the bottom but there are 30 or 50 people on the bottom who support the people you see. At the top is a little girl, probably 6 years old. Its scary to see the people shake sometimes but I didn´t see any of the castles fall. Most businesses were closed for a few days this week (including the supermarket!). We live just a 2 minute walk from this plaza (Plaza Jaume). On the right is a giant that I saw close to my apartment in the parade of giants. They are about 12 feet tall. It is basically a giant puppet and a person carrys it on their shoulders. They seem to be very heavy. There were probably hundreds of giants in the parade but I was not able to capture the spectacle very well on film. The parade was fairly interesting since the giants ´danced´to music played on drums and traditional catalan double reed instruments. (It sounded terrible most of the time but it was still fun.)