In 2002, Silberius de Ura was visiting Santillán del Agua, a village in the region of Burgos, in northern Spain. He was chatting to one of the neighbours next to the town church when the man raised his hand and pointed to one of the bells, calling it the tentenublo bell.
“He told me that, when played in the right way, the bell had the power to protect against hail storms, either by pushing the storm away or by turning the hail into water,” recalls Silberius. “Until then, I thought that bells were only used to call people to mass or to announce that someone had passed away, but this was different, it was sort of magical.”
Silberius, 56, was shocked by the revelation, but thought of it only as a curiosity at the time. A musician and multimedia artist, he is often immersed in many different projects, from playing prehistoric music to producing photography and video art about his region. Then, about two years ago, the issue of the bells resurfaced when he was visiting Covarrubias, another village in Burgos which has a 15th-century church.
Silberius had the idea of creating a site that would allow these ages-old instruments to have a new life on modern smartphones. “I was just thinking that the neighbours would find it amusing,” he says. He took pictures, recorded the bell sounds and, aided by ChatGPT, coded a very basic website.
But when he finished, he realised he couldn’t stop there. “It was highly addictive,” he recalls. And so the website evolved into a collaborative platform where anyone can upload photographs, audio files and information about their local bell towers and signature bell ringing patterns. He called it Tån:talán, a name that evokes the sound of bells ringing. Today the website hosts more than 500 bell towers and almost 2,500 bells.
For centuries, bell ringing has been a fundamental way of communication in Spain, particularly in the rural world. Bells called people to attend mass, but also marked the beginning of daily chores, pauses for lunch or rest, and the end of the working day. Bells were also rung to warn about storms and wildfires, to convene villagers to undertake communal work, and to announce births, deaths and marriages.
“Bells were the most instantaneous and fastest means of communication in those days, when there were no street lights, no alarms, and no telephones,” explains Ulises Hernando Chico, a bell enthusiast and collaborator of Tån:talán. “The old chimes were very dynamic and diverse. For example, when someone died, people knew not only whether the person was a man or a woman, but also exactly the time of the funeral and the person’s social status.”
Hernando, who is only 15 years old and went from playing with toy trains and spinning tops to becoming obsessed with bells, has spent the last two years researching and documenting bells and bell towers. With more than 400 bells recorded, he is by far Tån:talán’s biggest contributor. “I’m lucky enough that my parents take me everywhere,” he jokes.
Ringing a bell may seem simple, but there are many ways to do it. In the repique, for example, the bell remains still and the sound comes from striking it with the clapper that hangs inside. It’s different from the bandeo, in which the bell swings back and forth, and from the volteo, where the bell turns over completely. Bells can also be struck on the outside with a mallet, producing a duller, more metallic sound.
In addition, these sounds, played on a set of bells, can be combined to create specific patterns, their meanings varying between different Spanish regions, and even between villages. For example, a very common call is the “toque a concejo” (call to council), used to summon villagers to discuss matters of general interest. In some parts of Burgos, this call is performed with two bells, one high-pitched and one low-pitched. First, the bell ringer strikes the high-pitched bell in a long peal followed by several shorter strokes (ding … ding, ding, ding, ding, ding); then, on the lower bell, he repeats the same pattern (dong … dong, dong, dong, dong, dong). By contrast, in the province of Zamora, the same call is performed on a single bell, repeating several times a sequence of three short strokes (ding, ding, ding … ding, ding, ding).
For centuries, bells were rung by professional bell ringers, their technique passed orally from generation to generation. But over the course of the 20th century, most bell towers have been automated; patterns were simplified and unified across the country. And as bell ringers lost their jobs or died, a large part of this cultural richness was lost.
In recent years, local associations of bell ringers have emerged across the country. These volunteers work to preserve and protect the tradition, documenting old patterns and fighting for formal recognition. Their work has been paramount in helping manual bell ringing in Spain become part of Unesco’s Intangible Cultural Heritage list.
Young people like Hernando are playing an important role in this process. Many of the members of local bell ringing associations are children or teenagers, who take delight in playing centuries-old bells and find in these groups a way of socialising and learning about their traditions. Hernando himself is a member of one of these associations, Campaneros de Burgos: “We organise concerts and exhibitions, trying to promote the old ringing patterns, and also document, rehearse and practise them.”
Engaging with the younger generation has also been one of the principles of Tån:talán, which is why it was designed with mobile phones in mind. The platform includes many features to make it more interactive and appealing to young people. For example, there is a piano where each key produces a different church bell sound, and a trivia game, where people are challenged to correctly identify different patterns. Another feature allows users to deconstruct the sound of each bell into its harmonic notes and tweak them to hear the resulting sound.
“It’s a way of attracting young people to this world,” says Silberius. “Because if we don’t get the new generations interested, it will be hard to preserve these traditions.”
