The majorettes took to the streets of Vilalba dels Arcs again yesterday, a small town in Terra Alta with 634 residents. The population of majorettes was close to 150 members, with six-year-old girls and seventy-year-old ladies. Grandmothers, mothers and granddaughters with their canes and pompoms, parading and performing to commemorate the arrival of the majorette phenomenon in town in the 1970s.
Yesterday they all changed the jersey and boots for the commemorative fuchsia shirt. Pink is in fashion. The oldest, with canes; the youngest, also with pompoms. "There were women who hadn't danced for more than 40 years," explained an emotional Sílvia Alcoverro, majorette and spokesperson for the Vilalba Association of Majorettes.
One of the oldest majorette groups in Catalonia, it has kept the tradition alive. The local group, the only one that has survived in Terres de l'Ebre, has 33 girls and boys who continue to parade and perform, especially at major festivals and wherever they are hired.
"They keep calling us, it's a show," says Alcoverro, 22. In the towns where they perform, the reception is good. “They welcome us super well, we make a parade with the canes and the dance of the pom-poms. They are very spectacular choreographies ”, he adds.
"Sexist? Quite the contrary: we focus on the current empowerment of women. Those girls in the seventies broke barriers, they went out alone to rehearse to do a joint job ”, she reasons. The group has just made an appeal for kids to sign up, to try to break old prejudices. For now, without success. "We do not close the door to anyone."
The intergenerational meeting has revolutionized Vilalba in recent months. The preparation alone would have been worth it, with dozens of ancient majorettes traveling back in time to show off their batons again, to remember the traditional ball de pals: “with the majorettes to the rhythm of the music of the Bugle and Drum Band while juggling with a cane or metal rod. The pompom came later, fueled by the boom in American cheerleaders.
“The pompoms are from 2000 to the present, the classic was the number with the canes. We have innovated with new dances”, they explain. The traditional thing, in the seventies and also eighties, were the parades with a more military air. According to the definition of the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE), anchored at that time, a majorette is a "girl in a fantasy military uniform who, on festive occasions, parades along with others rhythmically waving a cane and to the sound of a music band. ”.
To celebrate 50 years, in Vilalba they have also organized an exhibition of old photos. Among the images, one of the parade they did in Barcelona in 1976, at the Festes de la Mercè, in one of their first feats.
The Vilalba group continues to offer its "show of pompoms and canes and cercavila around the town with the Banda de Cornetes i Tambors de les Majorettes". On August 9, for their biggest festival, they will premiere the new, spectacular jersey, sewn by professional dressmakers. Nothing to do with the “homemade wool leotard” that the mothers of those majorettes sewed in the early seventies. In Vilalba they arose by chance, as a dance group to encourage donations in a solidarity campaign in 1973. Fourteen girls, the pioneers, paraded dressed as majorettes. “It all started to raise money against hunger,” says Teresa Domènech, one of the founders. She liked it and it became a tradition.
