In tthe Vilafranca del Penedès post, there's a photo of people building figures that look like castells pilars, but different, and they're not wearing castells uniforms (white shirts with green faixes). Can you tell us more about that activity?
Also, it looks like lots of different activities in the photos invlove wearing faixes. What are some activities besides castells that people wear faixes for?
Hi!
They are falcons, they also climb but they're more acrobatic than castellers and make different kinds of structures, often while walking though the streets as part of the cercavila (dances parade).
On the other hand, castellers are focused on doing robust and taller towers, and only walk in occasional cases while doing the pillars (most famously up the cathedral stairs in Tarragona), but as you can imagine big castells are unable to walk. Castellers can be recognised easily because their towers follow a particular style of "architecture" to allow them to be so tall. On the contrary, falcons have different structures, often more decorative, but can't do such big monuments.
Their music is also different (though played by the same instruments) and they have different origins.
Here's a video example of falcons:
And here's a video example of castellers:
I was asked the difference time ago and went into more detail, you can read that here:
@tinmiss1939 they are similar in the way that they both consist of (Catalan) people climbing on top of each other, but the result is quite d
As for the faixa, it's a clothing item that used to be worn in everyday life. If you look at old photos or paintings, you will see that it was part of the usual clothing for men. That's why it's also part of most traditional clothes. If you look at most clothes for festa major, most dances wear a faixa, because it was a normal article of clothing back when these outfits were created or evolved.
