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The Butler returns to the Girona Fairs
Joan Garcia recovers a character from the Girona imagination to shape the festival poster.
The city of Girona has already started the countdown to its Sant Narcís Fairs, and this year it is doing so with the help of a character as singular as it is unusual in contemporary festive iconography: the Butler. The artist Joan Garcia has recovered her from the Girona popular imagination to make her the protagonist of the Fairs poster, a composition that concentrates in a single image some of the most recognizable symbols of the celebration.
The Devesa, the cavallets, the correfoc, the capgrossos, the castanyes and the castellers appear integrated in a visual proposal that maintains Garcia's characteristic language, based on geometric shapes, thick lines and a marked ability to synthesize different elements in the same composition. The result is a deliberately festive and visual image, but also linked to the memory and the imagination of the city.
The most unique feature of the poster is found, precisely, in the treatment of the Majordoma's hair. Garcia transforms it into a kind of photographic collage where various scenes and symbols of the Fairs are displayed. Among the fragments, we can identify the bananas of the Devesa, the little horses, the fire of the correfoc, the big heads, the chestnuts and the castellers. "Since I was little, for me the Fairs are the Devesa", explains the artist, thus establishing a direct relationship between his personal memory and the collective representation of the festival.
The figure of the Butler, however, is not an improvised addition to his creative universe. Garcia discovered her story about a decade ago, while working on a project related to the Fairs, and since then the character has occupied a space in his imagination. Created by the Girona poet Josep Tarrés, the Butler is part of the modern legends of Girona and is presented as an extravagant, conceited and gossipy woman, but also gifted with skills as a healer and cook. Her appearance, marked by flashy dresses and large headdresses, contributes to making her a figure particularly suitable for artistic reinterpretation.
To construct her image, Garcia has also taken into account one of the best-known sculptural representations of the character: the Butler by Josep Bosch, Piculives, located on Carrer de Ferran el Catòlic, at the beginning of the Archaeological Walk. Installed in 1973 and made of stone from Girona, the sculpture shows the figure holding the Book of Mysteries of Girona in her hands. "The Butler is a Girona woman made of crushed stone," says Garcia, in a definition that sums up the desire to connect the contemporary proposal with a certain idea of the city.
The poster was presented at Girona City Hall in the presence of the mayor, Lluc Salellas; the deputy mayor and councilor for Culture, Quim Ayats, and Joan Garcia himself. Its unveiling officially paves the way for the Sant Narcís Fairs, which this year will run until November 1, with the Majordoma as the new visual ambassador of a celebration that continues to renew its symbols without losing its link with Girona's memory.
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