Two centuries ago, Valls was stained with blood. A series of murders threw a dark cloud over the life of the city. Sometimes, however, things are not what they seem. And what seemed on the surface to be a bitter human tower (casteller) rivalry in fact went much deeper. Two hundred years later, we uncover the mystery thanks to the documentation preserved about those events.
That Sunday, as it was the annual festival of the La Mare de Déu del Carme neighbourhood, there had been performances at the local theatre. The prison warden, Josep Térmens, and his friend Josep Vallverdú, the deputy mayor of Valls, had not wanted to miss them. They spent an enjoyable evening, managing to take their minds off things after such an intense day. Their peace, however, lasted only until the end of the performance. Around ten o’clock, as they left the hall, they ran into one of the Mossos d’Esquadra police officers stationed in the town. He informed them that there had been disturbances. Given what had happened that morning, they were not particularly surprised.
To make sure everything was in order, they split up into patrols. Térmens’s group made their way down Carrer dels Metges, where they thought they saw a body. It was pitch dark, and visibility was poor. Guided only by the faint glow of their lamps, they moved closer. It was Joan Bofarull, known to everyone as Caballé. And he was dead.
“I told you this would happen”, remarked Pere Màrtir Veciana, the head of the Mossos d’Esquadra, who was accompanying Térmens’s patrol that night. A few men lifted the body to carry it to the hospital. On the way, they met Vallverdú’s patrol, who on Carrer del Carme had discovered another dead man. He was younger and went by the name Pau Monconill. The two victims had something in common: both belonged to the Colla dels Pagesos, one of the two human tower groups in the city. The other was the Colla dels Menestrals.
In fact, the human towers or castells were an evolution of the ball de valencians, a dance that had long been popular in Valls and was traditionally performed at religious festivities, ending with the construction of a human tower. By the late 18th century, this custom had evolved into a form of competition, with groups of dancers vying to build the tallest tower. But as rivalries grew and the festive aspect began to outweigh the religious one, the dance was banned in many places.
In Valls, however, the tradition continued unhindered and grew in popularity. This was how the casteller tradition was born. The historian Alexandre Cervelló discovered the earliest known record of a performance in a document from 1791. From then on, human towers were built with the constant desire to outdo one’s rivals. The competition proved stimulating, and both groups steadily refined their technique until they were capable of truly extraordinary feats. Such as the one witnessed on the day of the murders.
On Sunday 19 July 1819, the Colla dels Menestrals achieved a historic milestone: they raised an eight-storey tower. No one had ever managed it before, and the group was elated. Above all because they had surpassed the Colla dels Pagesos, the more experienced team. Not to be outdone, the Pagesos exerted all their effort and managed to match their rivals’ feat. The tension between the two groups could be cut with a knife, and fearing that it might erupt into violence, the authorities forbade any further castells that Sunday afternoon. They hoped this would calm tempers. But when Térmens and Vallverdú emerged from the theatre later that evening, it was clear that those good intentions had come to nothing.
Unfortunately, little documentation from those events has survived, and all that can be said with any certainty is that the main suspect in the murders was a tanner named Francisco Queralt, known as Cameta. It seems, however, that he managed to evade justice, since his name appears again among those involved in another brawl that also ended in tragedy. Even so, the killings led to the Menestrals being banned from building castells for fifteen years, at least in Valls, where they would not reappear until 1834.
In May 1821, a group of men – including Cameta – attacked Josep Pont Capdevila and his grandson, Josep Montserrat Pont. The younger man died from his injuries. Both of them, like the victims of 1819, were members of the Colla dels Pagesos. Yet the trail of blood did not stop there. On 5 April 1822, another Pagesos member, Francisco Miquel Coll, was stabbed to death.
Was the passion for castells so fierce that people were killing each other in the streets? Or was there something more behind it? Some early researchers of the casteller tradition suggested possible family feuds, but historian Alexandre Cervelló has shown that the families most involved in the tradition at the time had members in both groups. His research revealed that despite competing in the square, the two sides maintained cordial relations; to the point that they stood as godparents to each other’s children, shared property, and were even mentioned together in wills.
And this had been the case since the previous century. So what had changed? The political situation. After the war against Napoleon, Ferdinand VII regained the throne, and although he initially seemed willing to uphold the 1812 Constitution of Cádiz, it soon became clear that he intended to rule as an absolute monarch, as if the 18th century had never ended. This caused deep unrest among progressive sectors, who in 1820 staged a coup d’état that forced Ferdinand VII to restore the constitution. The Trienio Liberal (Liberal Triennium) began.
Society was now divided. On one side were the liberals; on the other, the royalists, who supported the crown without question. In Valls, as elsewhere, people took sides according to their social background: the Pagesos (farmers) were mostly royalist, while the Menestrals (tradesmen) leaned liberal. Thus, when the two groups faced off in the town square, their rivalry was not merely about castells.
But why were most of the victims from only one faction? Were some simply more violent than others? Historians like Cervelló doubt it. It seems more likely that when Ferdinand VII regained full power in 1823, ending the Trienio Liberal, the anti-absolutists were the ones most fiercely persecuted. Indeed, the last ten years of his reign (1823–1833) are known as the Dècada Ominosa (Ominous Decade) for the brutal repression of political opponents. It would therefore make perfect sense that the surviving documentation, preserved today in the L’Alt Camp Regional Archive, concerns victims loyal to the crown, kept as incriminating evidence to prosecute liberals. It’s easy to check. You can see for yourselves.
