Spanish Castiles!

After standing in the crowd for over 3 hours, I was getting a little anxious and a little bit hot...I am not sure why I chose to wear black...anyway the Spanish Castiles finally started. This tradition traces back to the days when pirate attacks were a problem in Spain and young people would make towers at the beach on eachothers shoulders to see if there were ships on the horizon. Today it has evolved into an amazing tradition/competition. There are 5 teams from the five different barrios of Barcelona all dressed in different colors to represent their area. They come in with stacks of 4 people and parade through the square pushing the crowd out of the way as they go. Once they arrive they have all come in, there is a competition for the fastest towers, tallest, best type and such. Unfortunately, we could not understand the scoring as it was all in Catalan. However, the majority of the towers are about 5 layers of people tall and after the five layers are in place, little kids with helmets climb to the top to signify that it is completed. We had the unfortunate experience of watching one of the little kids fall off of the top of the tower to the ground! She was okay when all was said and done, but it was definitely a scare. I felt bad for the guy on the bottom that everyone was supporting because he was getting groped like it was nobody's business haha. All of the castle building took place right in front of the Catalan government capital building in Barcelona and a bunch of what must be important people were out on the balcony watching the kids. Of course, being the ignorant person that I am, I had no idea who any of them were. I got a video of the castle building, but I accidentally held my camera sideways not knowing that you cannot rotate videos as you can pictures...I will see if I can get it up a little later.