La Fête de l’Ours
Women show their claws

“When you put on the bear skin, you are neither woman or man, but simply an animal,” says Céline, a pioneer of her kind at the Fête de l’Ours (Bear Festival). Since time immemorial, this pagan event has marked the arrival of spring and kicked off the carnival festivities. In Prats-de-Mollo-la-Preste, a Catalan village nestled in the Haut-Vallespir, this tradition is being shaken up somewhat by a group of local women. For the fourth consecutive year, Lucie, Fabienne, Céline, and their friends are trying to change this heritage by taking on the roles of the festival characters, which until now have been played exclusively by men. These “Ourses à Paillettes” (Sparkly Bears), as they call themselves, will stop at nothing, not even the reticence of the residents and their representatives.

Listed as UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage since 2022, the Bear Festival attracts a wider audience every February. It involves a handful of villagers performing a local legend. The plot is simple: a bear emerges from hibernation and kidnaps a young girl, taking her to a cave to take her virginity. hunters step in, rescue the victim, and capture the animal before killing it.

Other characters take part in this colorful fable, such as the “barbers” responsible for shaving the animal to return it to its human nature. Recently, “shepherdesses” have even been invented to escort the bear and galvanize the crowd. This is undoubtedly a way of inviting women to take part in the men’s show. However, none of them are allowed to play a barber, a hunter, and even less a bear. This discrimination is not to everyone’s liking, raising the question of how to balance cultural heritage with social inclusion.