The Badalona giants are municipal, performative figures created as embodiments of local history and communal identity rather than as mythic beings with a narrative origin. The city’s collection comprises four historically dated pairs that reflect continuity in civic display: Anastasi and Maria (made in 1858 and identified as the oldest in the city), Jeroni and Badamar (from 1946), Ferrer de Gualbes and Elionor de Santcliment (from 1970), and Ripal and Brunel·la del Mar (from 1982, the newest pair). Their production and upkeep are expressions of artisan craft and municipal investment in symbolic figures across generations, positioning them within the wider Catalan and European practice of processionally parading large effigies to dramatize local history and myth.
The gegants of Badalona are large, heavy anthropomorphic figures constructed of a wooden internal framework finished with plaster and carton (traditional materials for processional giants). Each giant represents a named personage — kings, princesses, counts or mythological beings — and is made to approximate human form at a greatly enlarged scale; sources describe them as 'big and heavy' though do not record precise dimensions. The city's eight giants are organized as four paired couples (Anastasi and Maria; Jeroni and Badamar; Ferrer de Gualbes and Elionor de Santcliment; Ripal and Brunel·la del Mar), reflecting the common Catalan custom of presenting paired male and female figures in public festivals.
Their 'abilities' are strictly performative and craft-mediated: human carriers and handlers bear the internal frames and animate the figures so they 'dance' and move in processions. Sources explicitly present them as constructed effigies rather than autonomous supernatural agents; there is no documentation of independent volition, magical powers, possession, or other paranormal capabilities. Their behavioral role is to participate visually and kinetically in municipal festivals and important civic events.
Gegants de Calonge
Gegants de Calonge are processional giants — large anthropomorphic effigies — associated with the town of Calonge and used in public processions and festivals. The figures function as ceremonial objects/personifications representing characters or local identity rather than as autonomous supernatural beings.
Gegants de Calvià
The Gegants de Calvià are processional giant figures used in public festivals in the municipality of Calvià, Mallorca. They function as civic festival participants and crowd attractions within Mallorcan popular celebrations rather than as supernatural beings.
Bacchus
Bacchus is the Roman identification of the Greek god Dionysus, a deity associated with wine, vegetation and fertility, ritual ecstasy and theatrical performance. In Roman religion he is conflated with the Italic Liber and known for rites that induce possession, frenzy (baccheia), and group revelry.
Bachué
Bachué is a Muisca primordial mother figure presented in colonial-era chronicles and modern summaries as the mother of humanity. She emerges from the sacred Iguaque Lake with an infant who becomes her companion; after populating the earth they transform into snakes and return to the lagoon. She was worshipped at a temple near Iguaque (present-day Chíquiza) and is described as an ancestral, life-giving protectress who sometimes returned from the underworld to guide her people in the accounts cited.
Backstreet Project
Backstreet Project is a 2000 single-issue American comic book tie‑in that depicts the pop group Backstreet Boys as themselves and, within the story, transformed into a superhero team called the Cyber Crusaders after receiving enchanted amulets from an alien. It functioned as a cross‑media promotional property with tie‑in Burger King action figures, three television commercials, and a short Flash webisode series.
Baco
A single modern reference (a Wikipedia disambiguation entry) lists "Baco (god)" with the brief descriptor "a Celtic god of the boar." Beyond that terse label, the supplied sources contain no primary or secondary evidence describing Baco's nature, cult, or mythology.
Badalisc
The Badalisc is a local ritual creature of Val Camonica (Andrista, Cevo) in northern Italy: an animal‑like masked figure captured in the woods at Epiphany, led into the village, and used as a mouthpiece for a satirical public speech that names communal misdeeds before being released back to the woods.
Badang
Badang is a legendary Malay culture-hero and supernaturally empowered strongman who gains immense physical strength after capturing a water spirit. Told in Malay Annals–style tradition and later retellings, his tales link feats of strength to local place-myths (split rock, thrown palace stone, graves) and to values of service and loyalty in a pre‑modern court setting.
Badb
Badb is an Irish supernatural female figure associated with warfare, death, and prophecy. She commonly appears as a crow or raven and as a wailing omen, acts on battlefields to sow confusion and foretell slaughter, and is often treated as one member of the triadic Morrígna.
Badoon
The Badoon are a fictional reptilian extraterrestrial species and interstellar polity in Marvel Comics, created by Stan Lee and John Buscema and first appearing in Silver Surfer #2 (October 1968). In the comics they function as a technologically advanced, spacefaring empire notable for strict gender-segregated societies (the Brotherhood and the Sisterhood) and recurring roles as conquerors and antagonists in Marvel's cosmic milieu.
Badrock
Badrock (Thomas John McCall) is a fictional superhero from Image Comics who, as a transformed 16-year-old, possesses a body of organic rock and serves as a member of teams such as Youngblood. He appears across Image Comics titles and crossovers, participating in team-based national-security level missions and occasional metaphysical storylines.
Baduhenna
Baduhenna is a named female deity attested once in Tacitus (Annals) as having a sacred grove (lucus) in ancient Frisia; modern scholarship interprets her name as linking a battle element with the matronal name-element and therefore views her as a local matron-like goddess with associations to war and a cult-site.
Community Record
- [1]Badalona giants. Wikipedia, 'Badalona giants'.wiki
- [2]Badalona. Wikipedia, 'Badalona'.wiki