Today we’re going to take a slight detour in our journey through the Iberian mythology and folklore: Even though the creature I am about to show is present in a lot of corpus Christi processions all over Iberia, the legend itself has French origins! More specifically, Provençal ones.
Alright, bear with me for a while: even though the legend is French, it has a strong impact in Iberian culture, and you will notice after some time that both of those cultures influence one another quite frequently, specially when talking about the regions of Catalonia in Spain and Aquitaine and Provence in France. Geographical, linguistic, and cultural proximities explain why that happens, but I’ll not delve into it too much right now, just keep in mind that that will not be unusual.
Today we will talk about the infamous Tarasca, a terrorizing creature from the French folklore that, as mentioned before, became an important part of Iberian religious processions. Why don’t we meet it?
Tarasca
The Tarasca (from the French Tarasque) is a chimeric creature with the body of an ox, the head of a lion, six bear-like legs, a spiky turtle shell (think of Bowser here), and a scaly tail ending up in a scorpion’s sting. In most depictions, whoever, its whole body is covered in scales, so people usually describe it as a dragon of sorts, albeit a really weird one.
There was once this city called Nerluc in the region Provence, where, according to the famous medieval book Legenda Aurea (‘Golden Legend’ in English), the aforementioned creature was basically destroying every single thing on sight. The ruler of the region, then, decided to send knights, catapults and basically everyone and everything he could mobilize to try and destroy the dreadful beast, but to no avail. Saint Martha (the woman who saw Lazarus being resurrected by Jesus in the Bible, weird, huh?), however, found the Tarasca and charmed it with beautiful hymns and prayers, and effectively tamed it. She then brought it with her to the city of Nerluc, where the population, probably dead scared (and with a perfectly good reason to be that way, to be honest), decided to attack the creature on the spot, and the monster, offering no resistance at all, died right there, in the middle of the city. The Saint converted many to Christianity that day because of her deeds, and the people of Nerluc, feeling sorry for what they did to the tamed beast, decided to rename the city to Tarascon (and even to this day the creature is present in the city’s coat of arms). Near King René’s Castle in Tarascon, as a matter of fact, there is a statue of the the Tarasca, allegedly pinpointing the place where the beast died a long time ago.
The legend of the Tarasca originated a festival created by King René of Anjou in 1469, taking place in the second Sunday after Pentecost, to ward off evil spirits causing floods in the region of Tarascon. There, a huge effigy of the creature is carried through the streets, as the population speak traditional cries. Nowadays this event happens on July 29, Saint Martha’s Day.
The tradition spread to Spain after some time, and around 1790, King Carlos III prohibited every single profane/non-christian element in Corpus Christi festivals all around the kingdom, and even though the law was enforced for some time, the effigy of the Tarasca still appears in Corpus Christi processions all over the country up to this day, as it was mentioned before in the beginning of this article: In cities like Valencia, Granada and Sevilla, the creature is almost identical to the traditional appearance described above; in other cities, like Toledo, the beast has the same name but different traits, like bat wings and the head of a snake; In the regions of Galicia and Catalonia the tradition is alive, but using names of creatures from their own folklore (Coca and Drach, for example,in Galician and Catalonian cities, respectively).
fun fact: The Tarrasque, one of the (if not the) most powerful creatures in the famous fantasy tabletop role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons, is heavily inspired both in name and appearance in the French Tarasque. The creature is present in almost every iteration and version of the game, and it is practically considered a synonym of a huge problem the players may face during their adventure.
Your source of Iberian wisdom 