Fairy tales are a distinctive genre within oral and popular narrative. In Catalonia they were traditionally known as “tales of magic” (rondalles de màgia), in contrast to “human tales” (rondalles humanes), which correspond broadly to what we now call legends. Unlike legends, fairy tales unfold in dreamlike, undefined realms: the forest of John the Bear, for instance, or the farthest reaches of the world where the Castle of No Return stands. Their characters are archetypal figures, such as the cunning Fortunatus or the courageous Little Red Riding Hood, shaped and reshaped through word of mouth across countless generations.

Fairy tales represent one of humanity’s oldest forms of narrative and contain an inexhaustible wealth of folkloric motifs. Their possibilities for recombination are so vast that they defy any attempt to confine them within rigid categories. So much so that today, perhaps more than ever, they remain subversive. Of all the forms of oral narrative, this is the one we love most at Llegendàrium.