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SPANISH TRADITIONS

IN IMAGES: Spain’s devilishly explosive correfoc celebrations

Devils, dancing, fire and dragons, discover all about the explosive correfoc festivals held in northeastern Spain.

Published: 29 January 2024 12:36 CET
IN IMAGES: Spain's devilishly explosive correfoc celebrations
What the devil! This is why sparks fly at Spain's most explosive fiesta. (Photo by JAIME REINA / AFP)

Correfoc literally means fire run Catalan and is celebrated throughout Catalonia, Valencia and the Balearic Islands. 

During the celebrations, people dress as demons and devils and run through the streets carrying huge sparklers that spray fire into the crowds.

A night of revelry in which participants dress up as demons and devils, and run through the streets scaring people with fire and fireworks. (Photo: JAIME REINA / AFP)
 

They’re typically accompanied by Samba-style drumming groups and large beasts such as dragons or werewolves, which also have fireworks attached to them.

Spectators dress in old clothes and protect their heads with scarves, hoods or hats and many even run into the parade to dance with the devils under the fiery rain.

READ ALSO – Els Castells: What you need to know about Catalonia’s human towers

The traditional Correfoc in Palma de Mallorca (Photo: JAIME REINA / AFP)
 

There’s very little regard for health and safety and in many countries in the world, such as the UK or Germany for example, these types of celebrations simply wouldn’t be allowed to happen.

There are even special kids’ correfocs, which in reality are not much more tame than the adults’ ones – they just happen earlier.

Despite this, there are usually very few serious accidents and firemen and ambulances are on hand to sort anything out quickly.

A participant dressed up as a demon brandishes a pitchfork with fireworks during the traditional correfoc festival. (Photo: JAIME REINA / AFP)
 

Correfocs are a big deal in Catalonia particularly and almost every neighbourhood in every big city throughout the region has its own correfoc group. They come out during each barrio festival, city-wide festivals such as Barcelona’s La Mercè held each September and during certain saint’s days such as Sant Antoni.

In Valencia, they come out during Las Fallas festival to parade through the streets and in Palma de Mallorca during the Correfoc de Sant Sebastià at the end of January.

Sant Sebastià is the patron saint of Palma and is revered for being the saint who saved the city from the plague. Each year he is celebrated with a week-long festival, which always features a correfoc as one of its main parts. 

The dances represent the fight between good and evil, but today it seems that only the evil remains in most celebrations. (Photo: JAIME REINA / AFP)

The festival is derived from the ball de diables or devil dances, said to come from medieval street theatre. The dance aimed to depict the epic struggle between good and evil. 

According to the Catalan ethnologist and folklorist, Joan Amades, the first mention of these dances was in 1150 in the Kingdom of Aragón. They reappeared in the 15th century and were performed as part of the Corpus Christi celebrations, which happen exactly 60 days after Easter.

READ ALSO: Why you should visit Barcelona’s quirky egg dancing festival 

The modern-day correfocs began in the 1970s in Barcelona. (Photo: JAIME REINA / AFP)

The modern-day correfocs, however, were first performed during Barcelona’s La Mercè Festival in September 1978.

According to the Barcelona City Council, the plan was to feature a traditional ball de diables, but it spontaneously turned into what we know today, where the devils deliberately spray their fireworks into the crowds and people respond by either running away or dancing under the sparks with them. 

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POLITICS

The plan for Catalonia to handle its own finances separately from Spain

Catalan separatists are pushing for 'financiación singular' to gain greater fiscal autonomy from the Spanish state, but the proposals are tied up with politics at the national level.

Published: 24 June 2024 14:06 CEST
The plan for Catalonia to handle its own finances separately from Spain

The recent regional elections in Catalonia in May were hailed by political pundits as the end of the procés and turning the page on the Catalan question. The evidence for this was that separatist parties lost their majority in the regional legislature for the first time in over a decade and that the Socialists (PSOE) won the most votes overall.

However, since then things have been far from simple. The PSOE candidate, Salvador Illa, is yet to secure an investiture vote and the political horse trading is ongoing with ramifications for Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s fragile majority at the national level.

The controversial amnesty law pushed by Sánchez’s government then got clogged up in the courts, despite being approved in the Congress, and Catalan separatist parties managed to cling onto the role of speaker in the regional parliament. Catalan lawmakers elected Josep Rull, a member of the hardline separatist Junts per Catalunya, which is led by exiled former Catalan President Carles Puigdemont.

READ ALSO: Separatists retain speaker in new Catalan parliament

The important context to understand here is that the Sánchez government is dependent on separatist parties, including Junts and the more moderate Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC). After inconclusive general election results last summer, Sánchez essentially made a deal with the Catalans in exchange for their votes to maintain his position in La Moncloa.

Catalan finances and national politics

Now separatist parties, particularly ERC, are leveraging this support in order to gain concessions from the national government. The main way they’re doing this is through a demand for financiación singular — ‘singular financing’. That is to say, how Catalonia raises and uses taxes, and whether or not it should be allowed greater fiscal autonomy closer to something like the Basque model.

ERC secretary general Marta Rovira has said in the Spanish press that greater fiscal autonomy “is the minimum that can be demanded,” and alluded to the conditionality of their support for Sánchez: “The Socialists must know that if Pedro Sánchez is not able to move on the singular financing… it will be very difficult for ERC to support him. Salvador Illa must bear this in mind.”

la financiación ‘singular’

But what is singular financing? Former president of the Generalitat, Pere Aragonès, described the plan as “full fiscal sovereignty” in the election campaign, and essentially what the ERC is proposing is a bespoke fiscal arrangement for Catalonia that allows the Generalitat to collect (and keep) more of its taxes.

This would be a step, albeit financial rather than constitutional, towards greater regional autonomy for Catalonia and likely viewed as a political victory for separatists.

For critics of Sánchez, it would be more evidence of his capitulation to Catalans.

Singular finance is an idea inspired by the so-called “Basque quota”. This is basically a fiscal arrangement that allows the Basque government control of most of its taxes but means it must also contribute a set ‘quota’ to the Spanish government.

READ ALSO: Spain’s contested Catalan amnesty bill comes into force

In Catalonia, the long-term aim would be something similar: for the Generalitat to collect all (or more than it currently does, at least) of the taxes paid in Catalonia and then transfer to the Spanish state an agreed portion of that.

In terms of cash, this would mean that the Generalitat would collect billions more in tax (some estimates put it as high as €52 billion overall) and more than double the €25.6 billion it received in 2021 under the current model.

Proponents of the singular finance model also suggest that giving the Generalitat greater fiscal autonomy would do something to redress the so-called ‘Catalan deficit’, the difference between what the Catalan economy contributes to the Spanish state coffers and what it receives in return investment. Generalitat estimates for 2021 put this figure at over €20 billion in 2021.

Therefore, the demand is not only political but economic. The ERC claims that changing the fiscal model would do something to resolve what it calls the “chronic underfunding” of the region.

Negotiations for a singular financing model, which will be tied up in the investiture negotiations for Illa, which are themselves tied up in the fragile arrangement at the national level, will likely continue for many weeks.

If no candidate has won an investiture vote in the regional parliament by August 25th, further elections will be called.

READ ALSO: Which Catalans want independence from Spain?

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