Santa Baldana, a performance presented by Josep Piñol during the VII Forum on Culture and Ruralities (Tortosa, 2024) and curated by Konvent collective, emerges as a speculative liturgy that subverts traditional structures of the sacred. Based on a typical sausage from the Terres de l’Ebre region —the baldana—, the piece proposes a symbolic intervention that reconfigures religious imagery from a situated, rural, and bodily sensitivity.

The piece activates reflexion on the boundaries between the devotional and the profane, and on the cultural value of popular celebrations as legitimate forms of symbolic expression. From this standpoint, Santa Baldana challenges the sacred narrative through a collective body traversed by the peripheral, the festive, and the visceral.

The central figure arises from a legend invented by the artist himself: a sow, on the verge of being sacrificed, transforms into a woman and, in a gesture of redemption, offers her blood to nourish the people. The pig —an ambivalent animal in Christian tradition— has functioned for centuries as a social and religious test. In the performance, that body becomes a symbol of offering and transformation: from sacrificial animal to saintly figure.

The action unfolded in two public acts. The first, Santa Baldana, was a procession through the center of Tortosa: eight bearers bore the float —a structure adorned with pig legs—, preceded by a marching band and followed by around 300 forum participants in pilgrimage. The march culminated in Parc Teodor González, where the second act, The Miracle, took place, led by performer Sònia Gómez in the role of the reincarnated Saint. There, before the public, stones were symbolically transformed into blood sausages (morcillas): a theatrical gesture that invokes —and rewrites— biblical narratives of transformation and abundance.

With 4,600 fabric morcillas and 60 reused pig bones, the installation emphasized the material and ritual dimension of the sacred. Not as a denunciation, but as an homage: a communal display embracing the aesthetics of excess as an essential part of popular forms of the transcendent.

The reaction was swift. The Diocese of Tortosa and the city’s religious brotherhoods issued a statement calling for respect toward “the faith and traditions that have been mocked and disparaged.” The political party VOX labeled the performance “an insult to Christians funded with public money,” while the mayor held a press conference to formally disassociate himself from the project at an institutional level. Meanwhile, social media and digital outlets amplified the piece’s resonance. El País, La Vanguardia, El Mundo, ABC, La Razón, TV1, TV3, RAC1, Catalunya Ràdio, Cuatro, Canal Sur, and La Sexta all featured the debate, from cultural segments to political talk shows.