Spanish ‘devil’ leaps over newborns in over 400-year-old festival

By Alyssa McMurtry

OVIEDO, Spain (AA) - In one of Spain's most unusual festivals, a man dressed as a devil took a leap over rows of newborns on Sunday.

The peculiar event has been held in the northern Spanish village of Castrillo de Murcia since 1621. Despite the seemingly dangerous act, organizers assert that no babies have been harmed in the centuries-long history of this daring ritual.

The baby jump is the culmination of a longer festival that involves El Colacho, the masked devil, donning yellow clothing and terrorizing the village for days.

In a display of good versus evil, El Colacho disrupts masses during the holy celebration of Corpus Christi, mocks the local priest and chases the villagers with his horse-tail whip. When not fleeing from his antics, the locals return the favor with a barrage of insults.

On the festival's climactic Sunday, parents willingly lay their babies, born in the preceding year, on mattresses in the town square. As El Colacho is chased out of the town, he leaps over the newborns as part of the ancient tradition believed to cleanse the babies of original sin and ward off evil spirits.

The organizing religious group estimates that around 100 babies participate each year.

Once El Colacho has been driven away, the villagers celebrate their victory with copious amounts of food and drink.

Although the festival marks the yearly triumph of the pious villagers driving the devil off their streets the day after the Christian holiday of Corpus Christi, historians suggest it has pagan roots.

Pope Benedict XVI even went as far as requesting Spanish priests to distance themselves from this baptismal tradition that contradicts some core teachings of Catholicism about original sin.

According to the local daily Burgos Conecta, historians are still unsure of El Colacho​​​​​​​'s exact origins, but many theorize that the pagan tradition was connected to fertility rites and the summer solstice.