Oh well, to be perfectly honest, I shouldn’t even use the comparison, because I never got past the first film in the trilogy.
But you can’t visit the Cabanas de Argelaguer, in the green valleys of Catalonia, and not think about hobbits of lord of the THEnillos🇧🇷 And, vaguely, in the far-fetched plans that most of us cherish and hide in our souls, protecting them from I don’t know what until our respective last breaths.
He — by baptism, Josep Pujiula, by famous, Garrell, aka Tarzan de Argelaguer, shares with our almost-to-be-president, Lula, his profession of origin: mechanical lathe.
To the curious reporters who sought him out again and again, he used to reply that he did what he did as a joke, without planning anything. He was leaving. He was living, kceta.
🇧🇷 I’m the king of fireoooo! – shouts, from the top of a tower of straw and burning wood, in the documentary ‘Sobre la marxa (El Inventor de la Selva)’ (De improviso, 2013, by Jordi Morató).
Dressed in a leather thong and throwing chairs in the air. After catching some fish with your hands. Ma-hero.
In a report on local television (TV3) in 2014, the interviewer asks the gentleman with white hair and a bic-blue shirt at the time: where did the idea for Tarzan come from?
“I used to bathe in the river over there, and it happened by chance — about it marxa“, he replies, simply and with a lot of heart, as they say here. He had been playing this sweet game for about 40 years.
A FANTASTIC WORLD
One fine day, or maybe it was a bonfire night, who knows?, Josep-in-his-late-30s, perhaps out of epiphany, boredom or an existential crisis (who never), began to build.
The chosen location: the natural park of Can Sis Rals, which he has always frequented, close to his native town, Argelaguer, approximately an hour and a half by car from Barcelona.
The name recalls the word quagmirethorny shrub with small yellow flowers used as a cheap coloring agent in the Middle Ages (sorry people, I have etimomania), but which is also supposed to come from Argelagoriosa beautiful and sonorous nickname that, according to wikipedia catalana, appears in local documents at least since the year 982.
((Say Argelagorios three times while jumping in front of the mirror for you to see))
From Josephian hands, therefore, houses, bridges, towers began to emerge.
Adorned with dolls’ heads, tire hubcaps, multicryptic inscriptions and the profuse contribution of nature from the Garrotxa, composed mainly of beeches, oaks, wild cats and wild boars, the Huts of Argelaguer — as they became known — began to expand . And getting attention. But not only from curious people: also from local authorities.
Three times at least Josep had to rebuild, move or adapt his city Magic. Either because of the lack of security in the buildings, or because its labyrinthine tentacles of wood-metal-stone were insinuated near the N-260, the Pyrenean road that connects magical axes such as Figueres (land of Salvador Dalí) and medieval Olot. And also, by the way, because the land belonged to the ACA, the Catalan public water agency.
But at no point did Tarzan give up. And that, French ladies and gentlemen, is an indelible part of the charm of these places.
Josep died suddenly on a spring day in 2016, aged 79, in his magical land.
Where he still remains today, in fact, since he built a mausoleum for himself in life, carved like a cave-sarcophagus in stone. The place gained the name of Pharaonic Tomb or La Cova del cough — “The Cave of the Big Head” in Catalan, which makes perfect sense. Neah.
I miss you. The then mayor lamented the loss, commenting that the previous day they had gone on a group tour of the mountains of Montserrat and that Josep was “as always and very active”.
My friend Pablito, author of the photos in this article, regrets that today “very little of what he did remains. He was a whole character who created incredible artistic constructions, transforming and mimicking his surroundings”.
If you venture into the lands from here, put it on the map: Avinguda dels Pirineus, 17853 Argelaguer, Girona. Come with an open heart.
And don’t be surprised by the inscription at the entrance that says that each visitor is “personally responsible for the consequences of their actions and decisions” — a warning about the situation of certain abandonment and insecurity in which, unfortunately, some of the Josephan wonders are found. . Or Tarzanians.
All that doesn’t matter, companies*: we entered, brave and fascinated, that man’s dream cough it’s the flight of the brabouleta…
Merry Christmas and New Year to all of us <3
* companys: companions in Catalan
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With a wealth of experience honed over 4+ years in journalism, I bring a seasoned voice to the world of news. Currently, I work as a freelance writer and editor, always seeking new opportunities to tell compelling stories in the field of world news.
