the masks | the event | origins and meanings | points of interest
THE EVENT 
Moving and jumping like a flock of goats, is mamutzones make the bells tinkling in rhythm. The costumed participants intercalate their disorderly gait goring and mime the fight of goats in heat.
According to popular tradition when the goats gore the weather is going to change. The combat for love then becomes a propitiatory rite for rain and fiction becomes invocation.
Sometimes mamutzones take off their hats (su casiddu in the local language) and lay them out to form a circle in which they dance.
In the meantime s’urtzu advances limping, awkwardly dancing and, sometimes, rushing at bystanders. He rolls about in the puddles, gets up again, shakes himself and throws himself down again bellowing all the time. Su’omadore is the only one who is able to limit s’urtzu’s excesses by hitting him so hard that he sometimes bleeds and prodding him until he comes round if he appears to faint. S’urtzu is dripping with blood and the ground turns red but it is only a trick because under his clothes he has an animal’s bladder full of blood and water which breaks under the pressure of his body when he falls down.
S’urtzu falls down again and crowds of mamutzones dance jubilantly around him as if they were possessed.