In the Blood: Performance and Identity in the Catalan Transition to Democracy
In the Blood: Performance and Identity in the Catalan Transition to Democracy

Summary/Abstract: The Patum of Berga is a Corpus Christi festival featuring the danced combats of effigies and masked figures, performed since the early 17th century in an industrial town in the Catalan Pyrenees. During the Spanish transition, the festival attracted massive participation from all over Catalonia, becoming a focus of democratic and nationalist resistance. This article describes the gendered character of the political struggle over the festival, showing how the limits of the Oedipal metaphor create a problem for community reproduction. The author explores the conservative nationalist and Francoist contexts of the feminization of the Patum, the moment of generational confrontation during the Transition, and the subsequent problem of imagining a new, nonrepressive social order.

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