Witchcraft in Catalonia

Witchcraft is not only an occult power, potions, curses, bad omens and deaths. It was also a manifestation of the fear of a people who had to live through a time of obscurity and hunger. In the seventeenth century, religion played a very important role and the people searched for answers to the disgraces of the time. In Catalonia as in the rest of Europe, many women were accused of being witches. They were questioned and, finally, some of them were hung or burnt at the stake.

Between 1616 and 1622, some four-hundred women from all over Catalonia were accused and executed because they were considered to be witches. People have always believed in the existence of individuals with supernatural powers, but it was at the beginning of the seventeenth century when most of the processes occurred, within a context of social, economical and religious crisis.

Many women were accused of making pacts with the devil so that he would bestow supernatural powers upon them. They came together at boards or gatherings, went through the initiation ritual and thus changed into witches to comply with their pledges; to renege to the Christian faith, and do all possible evil.

Some of their crimes were to perform evil through spells, by their glance or with bewitched food and objects, cause accidents in the field to the farmers and the bestiary. The most feared by the population were those allied to meteorological phenomenon: to cause hailstones to fall, to bring about strong rainfall, frosts or fog. Maybe for this reason, when 'plou i fa sol les bruixes es pentinen' ['it rains and is sunny the witches comb their hair', as the Catalan popular song says].

In contrast with other regions, there was no Inquisition in charge of purging, interrogating, torturing and eliminating the witches in Catalonia, but there were masters and local tribunals. A professional witch catcher was put in charge to determine whether the accused person was, or was not a witch. In order to do so, he undressed her then threw blessed water onto her back and, if a sign appeared on her back, the mark of the devil, that woman was accused. Another method used was to accuse those women who had no underarm hair, which was an unequivocal sign that they had used ointments to enable them to fly. During the interrogations the women were tortured until a confession was obtained and then they were taken to the stake.

Many of the women that died by hanging were just curers or midwives. In spite of this, the people believed in the existence of witches and in their power to do evil and they protected themselves with different methods: they blessed or perfumed objects and houses, they painted their windows blue, put crosses on the 'palmó' [whitened palm leaf displayed on Palm Sunday] placed over the door, they never left the country houses empty, they always had bread in the drawer, they washed undergarments in water from seven different sources, they never left nail clippings or cut hair on the floor, they put their shirts on backwards or touched bells to avoid storms. In contrast, maybe it is difficult to believe that the witches made a pact with the devil, transformed themselves into animals, or flew. Maybe for this reason witchcraft can be defined as a mixture of fiction and reality.