they called him boos and they happened in the carnival balls of XIX Barcelona. The folklorist Joan Amades explains it: “They consisted of reproaching someone of the attendees for the most intimate features of private life, which were defamed in public because of the disguise [la persona disfrazada]who used the language that could most hurt the abrogado ”.
The ritual, covered by the mask, was impressive, according to Amades: “As soon as a boo A circle was created around the bully, who made an effort to hide and said that he had taken the costume for someone else or that he wanted to play a bad joke on him”. The great connoisseur of customs adds that “the boos they used to be made by women” since it was not customary for men to wear costumes in these dances, a rule that some broke by dressing up as if they were women.
Los boos at masquerade balls they were the antecedent of the tweet that attacks someone from a Twitter account that does not show the real name of its owner. The show was very intense and, if the angry man discovered a man in the middle of the costumes, the thing could end with a fight outside the premises. It was common for the offended party and the offender to measure their forces with fists or using a weapon. On Twitter, these episodes are less dramatic and usually end with the blocking of the other.
The ‘esbroncs’ were the antecedent of the tweet of those who attack without showing their real name
The rich went to the Llotja dance and the popular classes to the Patacada dance, a term that gave its name to other places where the rules were relaxed and an atmosphere of transgression reigned, to a point of savageness. Today, in the Patacada dance, the modality most practiced by those gathered would be perreo. Nineteenth-century promiscuities and jokes had nothing to envy to those of our time, except that everything happened by candlelight.
Apart from the denaturation of the carnival that the schools have caused (forcing the poor children to do a thousand nonsense for a week), the main cause of the growing loss of interest in this party is the normality of the mask and the costume that the use of of social networks, from where we pretend to be what we are not. Today, we are all the Carnival King when we show ourselves from Instagram, TikTok or Twitter. And Lent never comes.
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