El Colacho: Spain's Baby Jumping Festival and Its Clash With the Vatican

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
Imagine for a second, right, that you are a new parent. You're holding your precious newborn baby, born sometime in the last 12 months.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:07)
Oh man, which is a terrifying time anyway. Your whole nervous system is just hardwired to protect them.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:13)
Exactly, you want to keep them away from hard surfaces, public roads, everything. But imagine taking that baby, walking out your front door, and gently laying them down on a mattress in the dead center of a public street.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:25)
Just leaving them there.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:26)
Just leaving them, you don't pick them up. You step back, you stand on the sidewalk with your neighbors, and you just watch as a grown man, fully dressed in this vibrant red and yellow devil costume, takes a running leap right over your child.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:39)
It sounds totally insane.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:41)
As his foot clears your baby's face by mere inches, the entire crowd just cheers. Okay, let's unpack this.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:49)
We really do have to unpack it because to the uninitiated, placing a newborn in the flight path of a leaping man in a devil suit, it looks like a scene from some sort of avant-garde horror film.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:59)
Right. It feels like parental negligence on steroids.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:02)
Exactly. But to understand why any parent would willingly participate in this, we actually need to travel to Spain, specifically a village called Castillo de Murcia, which is located in the province of Burgos.

**SPEAKER_1** (1:14)
If you find yourself in this village in late spring, you might just witness this festival. It's called El Colacho.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:21)
Yeah, or is it sometimes just bluntly translated baby jumping.

**SPEAKER_1** (1:24)
Baby jumping, yeah. But I think the locals often refer to the main event as El Salto del Colacho, so the devil's jump.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:32)
The terminology really sets the stage there, and the physical reality of the event is even more intense than the name implies, to be honest.

**SPEAKER_1** (1:39)
Oh, absolutely. Because the guy playing the devil, the Colacho, he isn't just wearing a colorful suit, he's fully armed for intimidation.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:48)
He's got props.

**SPEAKER_1** (1:48)
Right. The sources mentioned whips in these oversized castanets, so just push yourself in that crowd for a moment.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:54)
That's a lot.

**SPEAKER_1** (1:54)
It is. You're in this narrow Spanish village street, you got these aggressive bright colors dotting around, and you hear the sharp violent crack of a horse whip just cutting through the air.

**SPEAKER_2** (2:05)
Yeah. And beneath that, the incredibly sharp percussive clacking of those castanets. It's not just a visual spectacle, it's an absolute sensory assault.

**SPEAKER_1** (2:15)
It really is. It's designed to be deeply uncomfortable, isn't it?

**SPEAKER_2** (2:18)
Oh, 100%. The whole sequence of events leading up to the actual jump, it's carefully choreographed to build genuine tension in the crair.

**SPEAKER_1** (2:25)
Like long before any leaping even happens, right?

**SPEAKER_2** (2:27)
Exactly. Long before the mattresses come out, this devil roams the village. He actively taunts the onlookers, he brandishes the whip, he snaps those castanets right in people's faces.

**SPEAKER_1** (2:38)
So he's instigating chaos.

**SPEAKER_2** (2:40)
Yes. He is physically embodying disruption and fear, you know, evil in the community space.

**SPEAKER_1** (2:46)
So it's not just a guy lining up for a track and field hurdle, he is actively working the crowd into a state of anxiety. He is playing the villain.

**SPEAKER_2** (2:53)
He is the villain. And this chaotic, menacing atmosphere continues right up until a very specific structural shift occurs in the festival.

**SPEAKER_1** (3:01)
And that shift is musical, right?

**SPEAKER_2** (3:02)
It is entirely musical and atmospheric. It happens with the arrival of a group of pious men known as the Atabalero drummers.

**SPEAKER_1** (3:09)
The Atabaleros. So these drummers show up, and I have to imagine the whole energy of the street just flips completely. Completely. Because drums usually signify order, a march, a rhythm. It's the exact opposite of the chaos the devil was bringing.

**SPEAKER_2** (3:23)
And that is the exact psychological mechanism at play. The drummers arrive and they signal the start of the jump, but it represents a profound shift in spiritual power.

**SPEAKER_1** (3:33)
Wow. So the power dynamic changes.

**SPEAKER_2** (3:36)
Exactly. The moment the pious drums start, the devil loses his dominance.
He goes from being the aggressor who is taunting the crowd to being the one in flight.

**SPEAKER_1** (3:46)
The presence of the divine basically forces him to flee.

**SPEAKER_2** (3:50)
You've got it. The presence of the divine, represented by these drummers, forces the devil to literally run out of town.

**SPEAKER_1** (3:56)
Wait, I think I've seen the choreography here. So the devil isn't attacking the babies when he jumps. He is essentially being chased out of town by the holy drummers, and he just happens to have to hurtle the infants on his way out.