23 Feb 06
Prats de Mollo Life
Down on the border between France and Spain, up in the Pyrenees is a little village called Prats de Mollo. After catching the Eurostar from Waterloo to Paris, we got took a five hour train journey to Perpignan and stayed the night there. Next morning we got a hire car and drove through winding mountain roads to Prats de Mollo. It was a strange sight driving along sun parched roads and seeing snowy mountains in the distance.
Behind the Hotel Bellevue are a range of small mountains, at the top of which is a fort. On the Sunday three men of the village were taken up to the fort, dressed head-to-toe in sheep fleece, covered in thick motor oil and consumed gallons of alcohol. The men would then run down a pitch black tunnel leading from the fort to the village- and the chase began.
During the Middle Ages, (as the local legend goes), the bears came down from the mountains to the village and took the virginity of a shepherdess. The men of the village chased after the bear, captured it and shaved it. Since then they hold a festival at the end of February where men dress as bears and run through the village waving big black sticks in the air. The men would rugby tackle young women and rub the thick oil over their faces and bodies.
Now I admit that they did rugby tackle some men as well, but it mostly seemed to be a poor attempt to cover up the whole point of the exercise- an excuse for an oily fondle with young ladies. This went on for about two hours, after which the "bears" were captured and "shaved". I was busy filming crowd pickup shots and didn't see much of the shaving, (hence no pictures), but looking over Mike's footage, they seemed to rub an axe over the men's faces and then pull the sheep fleeces off.
For many more pictures, you can view the complete set