Lusatia Festival. Drebkau, Germany – September 2022

Akelarre – A Shadow Show – is an invocation to all the witches who were burned at the hands of the Catholic Church.

In the Middle Ages, witches and wizards met, with the supposed intervention of the devil, usually in the form of a goat, to perform their magical or superstitious practices. These meetings were called akelarres. These ceremonies took place in caves in the forests of northern Spain, where they could hide and celebrate without being seen by the other villagers.

For the last two years Las Maleantes have been researching about witches and their akelarres, how to interpret these rites through art in a contemporary way. Our first project was video art – Belladona Voluxa – in 2020.