The Giants

The Spanish lands are rich in stories and legends about giants. The traditions are numerous and very heterogeneous. The myths of giants enjoy a long literary tradition, already the Roman sources attest a powerful giant in the zone of Gibraltar, that with its force propitiated the shipwreck of the boats, which caused the death of the poor sailors.

Later the myths about the giants continue and they can be divided in two well-differentiated groups. The first group keeps special similarities with the Greek myth of the cyclops Polifermo. They are usually represented with only one eye, several arms, round feet… And the second group would include a superior race of superhumans with majestic abilities.

The Colossus, Francisco de Goya. 1808. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:El_coloso.jpg

About the latter, in Galicia (northern Spain), stories are told of ancient people before humans called ‘mouros‘, and they were giants builders. According to legend, they rest during the day and stay awake at night. They are said to be very rich and technologically advanced. Their world was predominantly subway, although their appearances are made on the surface. The world inhabited by them is parallel to that of humans, and the places where they were sighted were not natural, but sites that had the remains of some construction. Any activity they perform is prosperous since all their tools and products are made of gold. They can find the hidden treasures of mother earth and usually guard them in their ancient constructions, dolmens and megaliths. They usually represent themselves as peaceful people. Their behavior is usually fair and they give sacred importance to the given word. They usually consider the pacts as something sacred, but if they are betrayed, their fury comes out.

Their list of powers is very large. First of all, they completely dominated the four elements (earth, air, water and fire). They can shape the earth element at will without any difficulty, they could carry tons of stone as if it were a few grams of wheat. They could also become invisible if they wished to flee from the presence of humans. Their power was so strong that they could change their physical form at any time. This was the reason why human contact with them was so rare.

The myth of the mouros exists in almost all mythologies and religions. The myth begins with the belief in an earlier age of the earth, a golden age, an ancient paradise. In this previous age, there were some races of very advanced culture, they were cultured beings, guardians of ancestral wisdom and had a noble and willful hearts. Most modern researchers consider that these mythical men were ancient Neanderthals. It should be noted that part of the description of the giant is different from that of the Neanderthal. Neanderthals were more robust than us, but considerably shorter. The immense size attributed to the ancient settlers is motivated by the belief that the monumental megalithic works of the past could only have been built by people of superhuman strength and colossal size.

Sources:

Pablo Ruiz Osuna, & David Reñé Quiles. (2020). Guía de los seres mitológicos españoles. Circulo Rojo.

Mercedes Cano Herrera. (2007). Entre anjanas y duendes : mitología tradicional ibérica. Castilla Ediciones.