By Alejandro Noguera Borel, director of the Museo L’Iber
This Sunday, 7 June 2026, Valencia celebrates the 700th anniversary of the Festa Grossa (“Great Feast”), as Corpus Christi is popularly known in the city. It is one of the oldest and best-preserved processions in Spain, and also one of the most spectacular in Europe. At the Museo L’Iber we keep a unique work that makes it visible all year round: a miniature procession of 1,227 lead figures spanning more than 27 metres in what was once the chapel of the Palacio de Malferit. Today we tell the story of this festival, of the work that recreates it, and of the extraordinary artist who sculpted it piece by piece.
From Liège to Bolsena: how Corpus Christi was born
To understand why the people of Valencia have taken this procession to the streets for seven centuries, we need to go back to the 13th century and to two places far removed from Valencia: the city of Liège, in present-day Belgium, and the small Italian town of Bolsena.
In Liège, around 1208, a Cistercian nun named Juliana of Cornillon began proposing the creation of a specific feast in honour of the Body of Christ in the Eucharist. The celebration was held for the first time in 1246 in the diocese of Liège. But the decisive impulse came from an event that shook medieval Christendom: in 1263, during a Mass celebrated in Bolsena, a priest who doubted the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist saw the consecrated host bleed as it was broken, staining the altar cloths. The news spread quickly and reached Orvieto, where Pope Urban IV was staying; he asked for the relics to be brought to him with full solemnity.
Pope Urban IV established the solemnity of Corpus Christi through the bull Transiturus de hoc mundo, signed on 11 August 1264, setting its celebration on the Thursday following Holy Trinity Sunday, that is, 60 days after Easter Sunday. To give the new feast the greatest possible liturgical dignity, the Pope commissioned the greatest theologian of the age to compose its office: none other than Thomas Aquinas, who wrote hymns still sung today, among them the celebrated Tantum Ergo.
Urban IV’s successors did not ratify the decree, and the feast was suspended until 1311, when Pope Clement V reintroduced it at the Council of Vienne. From that moment on, the feast of Corpus spread throughout Latin Christendom with an energy it has never lost.
The procession arrives in Spain: Valencia, the second city
The celebration of Corpus soon reached the Iberian Peninsula. The first Spanish city to organise the Eucharistic procession was Barcelona, but Valencia followed almost immediately. The Eucharistic procession was introduced in Valencia by Bishop Hugo de Fenollet, who made the city one of the first in the Peninsula, after Barcelona, to hold it.
In Valencia, the feast was established in 1326 and the procession itself was instituted in 1355 thanks to Bishop Hugo de Fenollet, marking the start of a tradition that has lasted seven centuries. That first procession wound through the streets of the medieval city with a solemnity that impressed contemporaries. The bishop himself left very precise instructions: the streets were to be clean, the houses adorned, and residents were to scatter aromatic herbs in its path — a scene that, with few changes, is repeated every year.
Continuity was not always easy. In 1356, Hugo de Fenollet died, and the military threats posed by the Castilian king Peter I “the Cruel” forced the general procession to be suspended, with celebrations held alternately in different parishes instead. It was not until 1372, under Cardinal Jaime de Aragón, that it was resumed in its full processional form. Since then, with only a few interruptions, the Festa Grossa has never stopped being celebrated.
This year, Valencia is marking the 700th anniversary of Corpus Christi with a programme that reinforces its heritage and cultural significance. The cathedral’s processional monstrance, considered one of the most important in the world with almost 600 kilos of silver and 8 kilos of gold, will once again preside over the route through the historic centre.
As part of the anniversary, the City Council has begun the process for Corpus Christi to be declared a Fiesta of National Tourist Interest, after having obtained regional recognition in 2019.
Who was Friar Bernardo Tarín: the artist who drew it all
To understand the museum’s model, we must first know its source of inspiration. In the early 20th century, a Carthusian friar of Valencian origin named Bernardo Tarín y Juaneda (Valencia, 1857 – Miraflores, 1925) lived at the Cartuja de Miraflores (Burgos). Before taking his vows he had been a lawyer; after professing, he devoted part of his intellectual life to gathering and documenting the memory of his home city.
In 1913, Tarín produced an album with meticulous detail of the entire Corpus Christi procession of Valencia as it was celebrated around the year 1800. He is known for his work La procesión del Corpus en Valencia, en el año 1800 (“The Corpus Procession in Valencia in the Year 1800”), which has become a key reference for the iconography of the Valencian Corpus. A reprint of the work was issued in 1978, with texts by Manuel Sanchís Guarner and an expanded bibliography.
The 39 watercolours and drawings of the procession, including 16 double-page spreads, depict with precision and grace the characters, groups and symbols of that late-18th-century procession. Every figure is rendered with an attention to detail that makes the work a first-rate ethnographic document: guild costumes, biblical floats, dances, giants. It is, in essence, a colour photograph of a world that no longer existed when Tarín painted it, one he wished to preserve for posterity.
These watercolours were precisely the starting point for the most monumental work in the Museo L’Iber.
Vicente Juliá, “Chauve”: the master who recreated it in lead
To speak of the Museo L’Iber’s Corpus Christi is to speak of Vicente Juliá, known in the world of lead miniatures by the name of his workshop: Chauve. Vicente Juliá was born in Tetouan and has won every possible award in the field of lead miniature art, along with widespread recognition from the media. He came from a Valencian family, though he was born in Tetouan and settled in Madrid, the city where he built his career and became a central figure of Spanish miniature art.
Chauve was a toy shop and workshop located in Madrid at Calle Jorge Juan 31, where Vicente Juliá carried out all his craft and creative work for almost 40 years. The premises became a landmark for miniature art and lead soldiers. Anyone who walked through the Salamanca neighbourhood in the 1970s and 80s could not help but stop in front of its display windows, filled with hand-painted figures of astonishing precision.
Vicente Juliá, “Chauve,” is an acknowledged master in the field of lead miniatures, famous for his collections and dioramas, and the creator of a new genre: esculpintura (“sculpt-painting”), which renders historical scenes and pictures in three dimensions. He did not merely reproduce soldiers: he reconstructed moments, atmospheres, textures. Besides the Museo L’Iber in Valencia, the master’s work is exhibited at the Museo del Ejército (Army Museum), the Museo Naval (Naval Museum) and the headquarters of the Ministerio de Defensa (Ministry of Defence).
Vicente Juliá was also a close personal friend of Álvaro Noguera Giménez, founder of the Museo L’Iber and father of its current director, Alejandro Noguera Borel. This friendship was not merely affectionate: it was the bond between two men who shared the same passion — the lead soldier as a way of conveying history — and the same conviction about its cultural value. Many of the Chauve pieces preserved in the museum arrived through that relationship of trust and mutual generosity.
The museum’s piece: 1,227 pieces, 27 metres, an entire city
The procession was commissioned by Don Álvaro Noguera from the master miniaturist Don Vicente Juliá, who, through his Chauve brand, created the procession using 45 mm figures. Drawing directly on the watercolours of Friar Bernardo Tarín, Chauve sculpted, moulded and painted every figure by hand. Today the model comprises 1,216 pieces and unfolds along more than 27 metres in the former chapel of the Palacio de Malferit, the Renaissance building that houses the museum in the heart of Valencia’s Carmen district. Museo Iber
The result is a work unique in the world: an impressive three-dimensional recreation offering a sweeping visual journey through the entire structure of that late-18th-century Valencian procession. Looking at it is like glimpsing a Valencia that no longer exists, yet never entirely left. El Debate
The model’s layout faithfully follows the order of the procession. Let’s look at its major groups:
The giants, bigheads and cirialots
The procession opened with the gegants i cabuts — giants and bigheads — oversized figures representing kings, queens and exotic characters. Their role was popular and festive: they cleared a path through the crowd and set the “great feast” tone of the Corpus celebration. The cirialots were the bearers of the great processional candles, true architectural elements of light in that night-time parade.
The Dance of the Moma
One of the most anticipated and recognisable moments of the procession is the ball de la Moma (“Dance of the Moma”), an allegorical dance in which Virtue — represented by the Moma, a female figure — defeats the seven deadly sins. In Chauve’s model, this scene is reproduced in all its colour: the dancers dressed as vices try to catch the Moma, who evades them gracefully until she has defeated them one by one.
The biblical characters
One of the most striking sections of the Valencian procession is the parade of Old Testament figures. The one best known to the public is popularly called “the grandfather Colomet”: this is Noah, the old man of the ark and the dove, a symbol of hope and renewal. He is accompanied by Adam and Eve with their classic attributes, followed by a long biblical retinue: Abraham and Isaac, Jacob and the twelve tribes, Melchizedek, the Levites with the Ark of the Covenant, Gideon, Caleb. In this way, the Valencian procession built, right there in the street, a visual account of the Old Testament that its spectators recognised and celebrated.
The parishes of Valencia
The medieval city was organised into parishes, and each one paraded with its patron image and its parishioners. Among the oldest and most significant were:
- San Esteban: the city’s oldest parish, where, according to tradition, Saint Vincent Ferrer was baptised in 1350.
- San Nicolás de Mira: dedicated to the patron saint of sailors, seafarers and children; one of the most beloved by the people of Valencia.
- San Martín: home to one of the most beautiful images of Baroque Valencia, dominated by the equestrian scene of the saint sharing his cloak.
- Santos Juanes: next to the Lonja, the heart of medieval Valencian commerce.
- San Andrés, San Agustín, San Valero y San Vicente, and Santísima Cruz, among others, completed the city’s patchwork of parishes.
The guilds
The economic fabric of pre-industrial Valencia also had its place in the procession. The guilds paraded in an established order, with their banners and symbols. Chauve’s model includes, among others:
- The cadirers (chair-makers), craftsmen of seating furniture.
- The pelaires, the textile guild devoted to carding and preparing wool.
- The millers, essential to the city’s everyday life.
- The locksmiths and tinsmiths, metalworkers and household ironmongery makers.
- The shoemakers, one of the largest and most popular guilds of medieval Valencia.
Each guild carried its patron image and its own colours, turning the procession into a complete portrait of Valencian society under the Ancien Régime.
The Monstrance and the authorities
The high point of the whole procession was — and still is — the arrival of the Custodia, the monumental monstrance bearing the Blessed Sacrament. Flanked by acolytes with censers and clergy from every religious corporation in the city, its appearance brought silence and genuflection from everyone present. The procession closed with a representation of the city’s civil and military authorities: the Consell, the magistrates, the captains. Religious power and civil power, united in the same deference before the sacrament.
A unique testimony of Valencian folklore
The Corpus model shows both the ecclesiastical representatives and those of the civil and military side, along with the famous giants and bigheads, the Dance of the Moma, the Custodia, the eagles, the biblical figures and much more. Museo Iber
What makes this work truly exceptional is not only its scale — although 27 metres and 1,216 pieces at 45 mm are already a remarkable technical achievement in themselves — but its role as a three-dimensional historical document. Friar Bernardo Tarín’s watercolours recorded on paper what was, by 1913, a partly vanished world; Vicente Juliá Chauve’s sculpture and painting turned it into an object we can view from every angle, giving volume and presence to what would otherwise be pages in a book.
Chauve’s model is not exempt from a threat that affects much of the museum’s collection: lead corrosion, known in conservation circles as lead disease (mal del plomo). The Museo L’Iber’s own director, Alejandro Noguera Borel, studied this phenomenon in depth in his work La restauración del soldadito de plomo (“The Restoration of the Lead Soldier”, Valencia, 1995), later revised and expanded in the collective work Soldadictos 1. Pasión por los soldaditos de plomo (Barcelona, 2025). The process occurs when lead reacts with humidity, carbon dioxide and organic acids present in the environment — even those released by the wood of display cases or by the paints on the figures themselves — generating basic lead carbonate, a whitish powder that disfigures the finest details and, in the most serious cases, causes the original paint layer to lift from within. Valencia’s humid climate and the characteristics of the historic building that houses the museum make the problem worse. Some pieces from this procession already show signs of this corrosion, making its preventive conservation a permanent and priority task for the museum.
This model can be seen at the Museo L’Iber, located in the Palacio de los Marqueses de Malferit, right in the heart of Valencia’s Carmen district.
If this Sunday, 7 June, you attend the Corpus Christi procession through the streets of the historic centre — before or at any other time — you can come and see it reproduced in miniature, figure by figure, just as it was more than two centuries ago. That is what the Festa Grossa is: always present, always alive.
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About the author — Alejandro Noguera Borel, Director of the Museo L’Iber and of Fundación Libertas 7. In the world of the lead soldier since the 1970s.
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