The Badalona giants are municipal, performative figures created as embodiments of local history and communal identity rather than as mythic beings with a narrative origin. The city’s collection comprises four historically dated pairs that reflect continuity in civic display: Anastasi and Maria (made in 1858 and identified as the oldest in the city), Jeroni and Badamar (from 1946), Ferrer de Gualbes and Elionor de Santcliment (from 1970), and Ripal and Brunel·la del Mar (from 1982, the newest pair). Their production and upkeep are expressions of artisan craft and municipal investment in symbolic figures across generations, positioning them within the wider Catalan and European practice of processionally parading large effigies to dramatize local history and myth.
The gegants of Badalona are large, heavy anthropomorphic figures constructed of a wooden internal framework finished with plaster and carton (traditional materials for processional giants). Each giant represents a named personage — kings, princesses, counts or mythological beings — and is made to approximate human form at a greatly enlarged scale; sources describe them as 'big and heavy' though do not record precise dimensions. The city's eight giants are organized as four paired couples (Anastasi and Maria; Jeroni and Badamar; Ferrer de Gualbes and Elionor de Santcliment; Ripal and Brunel·la del Mar), reflecting the common Catalan custom of presenting paired male and female figures in public festivals.
Their 'abilities' are strictly performative and craft-mediated: human carriers and handlers bear the internal frames and animate the figures so they 'dance' and move in processions. Sources explicitly present them as constructed effigies rather than autonomous supernatural agents; there is no documentation of independent volition, magical powers, possession, or other paranormal capabilities. Their behavioral role is to participate visually and kinetically in municipal festivals and important civic events.
Accolon
Accolon is a mortal knight of the Arthurian court, presented in the Post-Vulgate Merlin tradition and Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur as Morgan le Fay's paramour and instrument in a plot to supplant King Arthur; his tale centers on enchanted weapons (Excalibur and its scabbard), love-manipulation, and a tragic duel with Arthur.
Acionna
Acionna is a local Gallo-Roman water goddess attested by a single votive inscription found at a spring in the Orléanais region. The inscription, discovered by Jollois in 1822 and datable by style to the 2nd century CE, dedicates a portico and ornaments "AUG(ustae) ACIONNAE" and was recovered from the Fontaine de l'Étuvée in Orléans; archaeological work in 2007 uncovered remains of a Gallo-Roman temple and a section of an aqueduct at the site.
Adsullata
Adsullata is attested as a Continental Celtic river goddess associated with the River Savus (modern Sava) in the Roman province of Noricum. Later traditions record her presence in Brittany as a goddess of hot springs and present her as an antecedent or origin-form of the Anglo‑Celtic sun goddess Sul.
Aglovale
Aglovale (also Agloval, Aglovan, Aglovaus, Acglavael) is a human knight of Arthurian romance, presented as the eldest legitimate son of King Pellinore and a Knight of the Round Table in the Vulgate/Post‑Vulgate cycles, Malory, and later adaptations. He brings his long‑lost brother Perceval to Camelot, takes part in military actions (including slaying Agrippa in one account), and his death is related in varying ways across traditions (accidental at Gawain's hand, deliberate murder by Orkney kin, or killed during Lancelot's rescue of Guinevere).
Agolant
Agolant is a literary Saracen king who appears as a recurring antagonist in medieval and Renaissance epic cycles (Matter of France). He functions as a human royal opponent to Charlemagne and his peers, supplying martial episodes, genealogical connections, and the transfer of legendary arms and horses in chansons de geste and later Italian romances.
Agravain
Agravain is a literary knight of Arthurian romance cycles: one of the sons of King Lot of Orkney, a member of the Round Table, and a recurring figure in French and English medieval prose and verse. He is portrayed as a skilled but morally problematic courtly knight whose jealousy, malice, and intra-familial violence drive key narrative conflicts (notably the slaying of Lamorak and the exposure of Guinevere).
Agrestes
Agrestes is a legendary pagan king of Camelot appearing in accounts of the 13th‑century Arthurian Vulgate Cycle. Presented as a human antagonist to the Christian mission associated with Joseph of Arimathea (or his son Josephus), his violent persecution of converts is followed by madness, self‑destruction, and the subsequent consolidation of Christianity in Camelot.
Alicanto
A nocturnal, flightless bird-like being from Chilean Atacama desert folklore whose glowing wings indicate the presence of underground ores; it can guide a stealthy prospector to a mother lode or, if offended or detected, extinguish its light and mislead or endanger the seeker.
Aloja
Aloja is listed in available sources as a named figure in Catalan legend; beyond a brief disambiguation listing, traditional folkloric details are absent in the consulted material. A contemporary commercial design note reinterprets Aloja as a Mediterranean/sea goddess with energetic yet tender character, but this is explicitly a modern creative description rather than documented folk belief.
Ambisagrus
Ambisagrus is a local Gaulish deity attested in Gallo‑Roman religion, worshipped at Aquileia in Cisalpine Gaul and identified there with Jupiter Optimus Maximus under Roman interpretatio. The name is tentatively analyzed from Proto‑Celtic elements *ambi‑ + *sagro‑.
Anextiomarus
Anextiomarus (Gaulish Anextlomāros; feminine Anextlomara) is an ancient Celtic theonym or epithet attested in Romano-British and Gallo-Roman inscriptions. In the sources it functions as an epithet of a solar deity syncretized with the Roman god Apollo and is glossed in one source as meaning roughly "Great Protection," indicating a protective, beneficent cult function in votive contexts.
Arduinna
Arduinna is a local Gallo-Roman tutelary goddess of the Ardennes (Arduenna) — a divine personification of wooded heights — attested in two inscriptions and later equated with the Roman Diana. Iconography associating her with a boar-riding huntress exists in modern literature but the identification is uncertain.
Community Record
- [1]Badalona giants. Wikipedia, 'Badalona giants'.wiki
- [2]Badalona. Wikipedia, 'Badalona'.wiki