History
This history begins with an exchage program promoted by the Generalitat, the autonomous govern of Catalonia. In this program, youth members of catalan centers travelled to Catalonia to know their ancestors' land, its culture and traditions.
Personally, I was part of this program in july, 1996. I was able to experience by myself the things my grandparents used to tell me, like the "sardanes" at the gates of Barcelona's Cathedral or the charm of the "Ramblas". But I also saw something I had no idea of: castells. And I was really surprised.
Back in Buenos Aires, the urge to give Les Quatre Barres some young life amd my idea to create a Colla Castellera got together, and along with my siblings, I had the purpose to do it.
In February, 1997, thanks to the club's president, Albert Ventura, we got a video tape and we started to study the different ways and tecniques to make a castell. Meanwhile, a space was created in LQB in order to attract youths (mostly our friends) and tell them about the idea.
By the next june, LQB had become a meeting point for youth, were people started to get to know each other and make new friends, but the colla idea was still too green.
At this point, another key factor was the new edition of the exchange program. Its coordinator, Pep Camps, who knew about our plans, took the Colla dels Castellers de la Vila de Grŕcia before the Castelar kids who were there, providing them with information and even giving them a girdle.
From Buenos Aires, in the meantime, we'd look for any kind of information about the subject and Nuri (colla's member) searched the internet for some contact. And so we met the Colla Jove Xiquets de Tarragona and the colla Tirallongues de Manresa.
When the kids came back from Catalonia we started to work and from late august we began to try to make a castle. We also kept gathering information through Pep Camps, Ángel Miguel Gianfrancesco (Colla Tirallongues) and Ŕngel Solé Guasch (Jove Xiquets de Tarragona).
We aimed to make our first appearance within the V Trobada de Casals Catalans del Cono Sud de América, (V Meeting of Catalan Centers of America's South End), set in Mendoza.
How we got to Mendoza (1000 km. from Castelar) is a long story, but anyway, on october 17th there were 25 of us in that city, along with our uniforms, girdles, two "grallas" and a drum, ready to face our first performance.
Sunday 19 at 12:30pm, the Colla Castellera Les Quatre Barres from Castelar made its way through the people's applause, to the rythm of grallas and drums, to make three modest castles: a 3 of 3, a "pilar" of 3 and a 3 of 4. Unexperience should be considered as well as the few people we were: about 15 of us had remained in Buenos Aires, because of their jobs or school.
To us, it was a total success. It helped us strenghten as a group and keep on this task, adding more people to it and making public this beautiful and surprising activity.
But we know we still have a long way to go. This was only a beautiful beginning for something that can become a great adventure... filling America with castles!
Fernando Ledo
Founder and 1st Cap
of the Colla
