GIGANTES E CABEUDOS
Giants operam como uma metfora inconsciente para os pais , que o Big-Heads agem
como crianas metafricos , e que todo o desfile uma encenao dramtica das
relaes de poder , no s no seio da famlia nuclear, mas tambm na sociedade em
geral.
(p. 19) The costumed figures, in both form and behavior, suggest a collective, vicarious
rebellion against authority and control. The rebellion is most graphically portrayed at the
family level, with the children displaying unharnessed aggression. But there is evidence, too,
that this hostility becomes generalized, so that it is directed against all the individuals and as
members of groups, have to contend.
To develop my thesis, I wish first to give a stark description of the parade. I shall go on to
provide relevant ethnographic background, and then conclude with an analysis of the parade's
symbolic significance. I should caution that the present study refers specifically to Giants and
Big-Heads in contemporary Monteros. These figures, particularly the Giants, have a long
history and widespread distribuition throughout western Europe. Ren Meurant (1960, 1967,
1969)and Klaus Beitl (1961) have devoted years of investigation to the enormously variegated
manifestations of Giants figures, past and present. It seems that bona fide processional Giants
first appeared in early fifteenth-century Flanders (Meurant 1967, p. 123), and shortly
thereafter diffused to the Iberian peninsula (Gennep 1935, 1, p. 168). We know that Giants
and Big-Heads have existed in Spain throughout the past four hundred years, during which
they have usually been associated with corpus Cristi and pre-Lenten Carnaval celebrations
(Almerich 1944; Caro Baroja 1965; Gmez-Tabanera 1968b, pp. 188-9; Pl Cargol 1947, pp.
291-96). What we lack in virtually all accounts, however, is the combination of detailed
description and extensive local ethnography that might