Walter Finch
THE festival of El Colacho, which takes place in a village in Burgos, northern Spain, each June, raises more than a few eyebrows.
Dating back from the 1620s, it sees mothers from the village of Castrillo de Murcia willingly lay their babies down in the street.
Men, dressed as red and yellow-masked ‘devils’, then run through the village shouting insults at the townsfolk and whipping at them with horsetails.
The tradition then culminates with the ‘devils’ leaping over rows of babies born in the village in the last 12 months – carefully laid on mattresses rather than the cold hard concrete.
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The ‘devil’ is believed to absorb the babies’ original sin, protect them against illness and evil spirits, and bring them safe passage through life.
Unsurprisingly, it has left many Spanish social media users unimpressed.
“Just when you think Semana Santa can’t surprise you any more, you find a McPollo burger jumping over babies,” read one comment.
“This village must have suffered a grave tragedy in the past to have ended up with this absurd tradition,” wrote another.
“The most logical way to stop this tradition is if no one agrees to put their babies down on the mattresses.
“Sure, the idiot who jumps is just that; an idiot. But parents are even worse.”
Thought to be a pagan twist on Catholic traditions, it’s supposed to be a triumph of good over evil which takes place on the Sunday after the Feast of Corpus Christi.
After the ‘devil’ has successfully jumped over the babies, they are sprinkled with rose petals by the black-clad atabalero, pious men who drive out evil with the flight of the devil.
The mothers of the village then come to collect their babies from the floor, confident they will live a blessed and sin-free life – according to tradition.
There have been no reports of accidents or ‘serious injury’ to the babies throughout the tradition’s 400 years of existence.
Others were more supportive of what is a unique and important part of the cultural heritage of the village.
“To all those who think this harmless tradition is a crime worthy of the guillotine, I would like to list some 2,500 things that are most harmful to babies that people have completely normalised,” one user wrote.
She then listed, ‘80% of their diet, the lack of street, free play and yes, getting dirty and bumping themselves from time to time, playing alone, plugging in their tablets, putting sun cream on them, many of the vaccines…’
“Always having the heating on full blast, giving them medications unnecessarily, signing them up for a thousand extracurricular activities and turning them into people with stress from the age of 3, living in polluted cities, using tupperware and plastic things in general, taking planes and cars…”
