The Tarasca of Toledo

The Tarasca of Toledo spews smoke from its mouth, it has the body of a turtle, vampire wings and the head of a snake with sharp jaws. On the back of the monster in Toledo is the puppet of Anne Boleyn (1507-1536): the second wife of Henry VIII Tudor King of England (1491-1547), married after the divorce of Queen Catherine of Aragon. Since then, Anne Boleyn was singled out as the cause of the separation of the Church of England from that of Rome. For this reason, the new sovereign was subject to constant execration by Catholics. During the Counter-Reformation, the ill-fated queen (who was beheaded at the behest of her husband) has become the symbol of sin and heresy. The habit of putting her on the back of the Tarasca is therefore a way to stage a symbolic defeat of the enemies of the Church. In the eighteenth century, under the restrictive measures issued by civil and religious authorities, the Tarasca of Toledo stopped parading for a while during the celebration of the Blessed Sacrament. Today, the monster of Toledo, although it has lost its symbolic connotations originating, maintains its charm intact: the Tarasca, in fact, is still the most gigantic puppet appreciated by the audience.