Badalona giants

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.