The Tarasca of Seville

Still present in many places in Spain, the Tarasca instead disappeared from the procession of the Andalusian capital in the late eighteenth century. The Sevillian Tarasca was a huge monster topped with a small puppet. Known as the tarasquillo, it was a representation of evil in small-scale, and elsewhere took on the appearance of Anne Boleyn, a devil or a little moor. The Tarasca is the most important of the zoomorphic figures in the repertoire of the processional Spanish giants (of which we can still admire a complete assortment in Barcelona and Valencia). It is a kind of dragon that represents the multifaceted physiognomy of the enemies of the Church and symbolizes their inevitable defeat. The Tarasca is the Spanish equivalent of a Provencal monster (the Tarasque), which is said to have been domesticated thanks to the miraculous intervention of Saint Martha of Bethany. This symbolic value, which is sufficient to explain its presence within the Corpus Christi procession, but not enough to justify its success and its longevity. In fact, it owes its constant presence and centrality in the festivities in Spain to his physiognomy and bizarre hybridity, which has allowed it to become emancipated from the religious symbolic context in which it was born and entered the imaginary of a secular holiday. Another factor that explains the success of the Tarasca is definitely its ability to interact with the public. The Sevillian Tarasca, for example, differed from that of Barcelona on account of its complexity. Indeed, unlike the Catalan monster, it was equipped with 7 heads (an explicit reference to the capital sins) and was topped by a small castle on top of which there was a strange character: equipped with a whip, the latter directed itself to the public with irreverent and knavish attitudes (with the collaboration of a group of extravagantly dressed young people who surrounded him).