The Manresa Mediterranean Fair begins, celebrating its 25th anniversary

Cia Voël is finishing the last details of the Reditus show, which will be in charge of officially opening the 25th edition of the Fira Mediterrània de Manresa tonight.

Thomas Osborne
Thomas Osborne
06 October 2022 Thursday 03:49
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The Manresa Mediterranean Fair begins, celebrating its 25th anniversary

Cia Voël is finishing the last details of the Reditus show, which will be in charge of officially opening the 25th edition of the Fira Mediterrània de Manresa tonight. La Fira recovers, after six years, a large format show for its inauguration. The proposal, which combines circus, music and popular culture, revisits the legend of El Pou de la Gallina in dialogue with the castellera group Els Tirallongues from Manresa. The co-founder of Cía Vöel, Debi Cobos, explained to ACN that they wanted to give a new meaning to the legend: "Instead of explaining that a single person is the one who takes the chicken out of the well, we have taken a group to demonstrate that if a lot of people are serious about something, they get what they want.

Legend has it that a girl lost a chicken that she kept for her stepmother. The animal had the bad luck to end up at the bottom of a well and died. The girl asked Saint Ignatius of Loyola for help and he returned the live hen. In an interview with ACN, the co-founder of Cía Voël and co-director of the show, Debi Cobos, explained that they have given a "new interpretation" to the legend of the Pozo de la Gallina "through the language of the circus" and have wanted "modernize" it.

The show wants to highlight the strength of the groups: "The human towers demonstrate that, by joining forces, they do things that they could never do alone". In this sense, Cobos related that, in the show, the castells represent the well, "which instead of going down, goes up" and the circus artists "represent the different states of the hen coming out of this well". It is the tightrope walker who ends up coming out of the well until she sees the light: "It is a message of hope."

The co-director of the production also considers that the discipline of the circus and the castellers have many points in common. "The circus is like a family in which everyone helps you when you're scared and, in the world of human towers, the same thing happens. It's a big family that comes together to do something and they're also there in case you fall and give encouragement".

For three days (October 6, 7 and 8), Manresa's Plaza Mayor will host the premiere of Reditus, a show co-produced by the Fira Mediterrània and which will serve to kick off the event, which celebrates its 25th anniversary this year. It is a large-format assembly that will have a 10-meter-high structure. Cia Voël will be accompanied on stage by Els Tirallongues, the tightrope walker Mariona Moya, the aerial ladder by Griselda Juncà and the aerial painting by Josefina Castro and Daniel Ortiz.

Cobos explains that his company puts on circus shows with large structures and laments that "it is becoming more and more difficult to carry out this type of set-up." "People are afraid to bet on the circus and things are becoming smaller and smaller, but if we don't bet on this type of circus, nobody will," he says.