Monocle: Issue 179 / Global
Rising to the occasion
As this issue’s beautifully compiled report on Catalan ‘castells’ illustrates, tales of teamwork and togetherness can uplift us all, says Andrew Tuck. We apply that spirit of mutual support to these pages by way of a new section, The Concierge, which offers a leg up to inquisitive travellers worldwide, while we lift our glasses to a happy holiday season for all our readers.
It’s one of those epic events that we had been meaning to cover for years, yet somehow it never made it to the page. But this time, finally, we were there for the biannual castells competition that’s held in the Spanish city of Tarragona. The castells in question are towers constructed from tiers of people, with each level balanced on the broad shoulders of the folk below. To triumph in the competition, you need to make a tower that’s tall (the highest castells can reach a giddy 10 storeys) but also complex. To achieve this, you must place the…
