Funny festivals: El Colac ho
Known in English as the Baby Jumping Festival, this peculiar celebration happens every year in a small Spanish town called Castrillo de Murcia, during the Corpus Christi religious feast.
The festival has been happening since at least 1620, and is most likely an old pagan tradition that was adopted into Christian traditions when the Catholic church grew in the area.
El Colacho is what you would expect, in the sense that it really is jumping over babies. Each year, infants born in the last 12 months are laid out in neat rows on pillows spaced out in the main street. Men dressed in bright traditional devil outfits then proceed through the streets, whipping bystanders and terrorizing onlookers before leaping over the kiddies.
The idea of the jumping devils is that the children are then absolved of man’s original transgression (rather than the more traditional light dunking that most Catholic baptisms involve).
The village of Castrillo de Murcia is rather small, and best reached by flying into nearby Burgos Airport.
The festival takes place on the first Sunday after Corpus Christi so its date will vary accordingly each year.