The
Day of the Innocents on December 28 is celebrated all over Spain but the character,
Juan Pelotero, who once again year roamed the streets this year with his band
of “inocentes” is peculiar to Calasparra.
Juan Pelotero is a fancy dress character in ragged clothes and his face painted
blue with hollin. According to legend, he represents the “lower classes” of the
town who, on December 28, can earn himself some extra money and a drink or two.
He carries a two metre long stick from which a ball of old cloth is suspended on
an esparto grass cord. The game is that any Calasparrian can give him money so
that he “beats” someone else. When Pelotero completes this mission he returns
to demand more money in order to not return the beating. In this manner he
passes from one side of the town to the other with his stick and ball collecting
fees from one person or another.
However, the “innocents,” who historically have nothing to with the local character,
Juan Pelotero, represent and ridicule the powers of the town: the Mayor, the
Judge and the Jailor. They “fine residents for drinking and also for not
drinking and for stealing. Victims had to pay in order not to be fined or end
up in jail.
According to tradition, even though Juan Pelotero made some money on rounds, he
usually ended up in the dirtiest part of the Fuente de la Secano, where the
livestock drank and the local women washed their dirty clothes and animal tripe,
for a cold bath at the coldest time of the year.
During the dictatorship Juan Pelotero failed to appear in the streets of Calasparra
but today the legend and the tradition is alive and well.
This year, for the fourth year running in Calasparra, Pelotero was accompanied
by the Travelling Storyteller who wound his tales in various corners of the
town.
