Xavier Pallàs plants his feet on the belfry floor and grips the rope. With one tug, he fills the lush Spanish valley below with the echoing peal of a church bell.
Clang-clong!
Clang-clong!
Clang-CLONG!
As a swinging bronze bell pulses with each strike of the clapper, the small stone tower fills with a vibrating hum.
Most people today don’t get to hear church bells, unless they are merely digitized sound effects for a ringtone or doorbell chime. But at the Vall d’en Bas School of Bell Ringers, Pallàs teaches students that church bells have much deeper purpose. And tolling them by hand can help achieve it.
Before newspapers, radio, telephones, television, and the internet, bellringers shared information. The bells rang out to tell all in hearing distance about weddings, funerals, or even emergencies. Bells performed like wordless bulletin boards.
“For centuries, the tolling of church bells was our most important communication method,” says Pallàs, the school’s founder and director. The belfry doubles as his classroom.
In a Spanish church called Sant Romà, students take turns practicing chimes for Easter services, weather forecasts, or calls for help. They learn that the bells could tell workers to get back to reaping wheat or signal the arrival of fresh fish at the market.
It all depends on which bells get rung and how many times—kind of like speaking in code. Bells even tolled to inform that someone had passed away. For the death of a woman, students swing the largest bell. That one weighs 945 pounds.
Bellringing takes great mental and physical energy. One who stepped up to ring bells was volunteering to be a human clock and a public loudspeaker.
Most churches now use technology to control their bells—if they even have bells anymore. Just one tap on a smartphone and off the bells go. But that detracts from what makes them valuable and beloved, says Pallàs.
“The (automated) hammer will always be mathematically precise,” says one of the students. “There is emotion in the human touch.”
Roser Sauri, one of the students, says the sounds of church bells tolled in her grandfather’s village when he was baptized. She has learned to produce those tones now thanks to the school.
“The bells formed a part of my life,” says Sauri.
Why? It’s a gift to get information speedily using smartphones—but it’s still beneficial to learn in an in-person community.
For more about Spain, read Adventures of Don Quixote by Argentina Palacios in our Recommended Reading.
