Reply to The Times of India

Dear sirs,

Regarding your article of August 16 2011 ("Spanish to enliven dahi handi contests in Mumbai"), we think that it's inaccurate to describe human towers (castells) as a "Spanish" tradition. Not unlike India, Spain is a multinational State, with several peoples speaking different languages, who all have their very different traditions and, indeed, very different perspectives on many things. One would be hard pressed to find a single tradition that is shared by all citizens in Spain. To most people in Spain, flamenco music, for example (a cultural expression of Andalusia, in the south), sounds as foreign as an Indian raga, and outside of Catalonia (the area around Barcelona, in the northeast) human towers are as unfamiliar as the Janmashtami festival. Thus, we feel it would have been more correct to refer to castells as a strictly Catalan tradition. More information about it can be found in this article ("Catalan human towers embark on an educational trip to India").

Having said this, we hope that the public in Mumbai will appreciate and enjoy the Catalans' performance.