Intangible Heritage of Humanity. In Spain The Tarasca (Spanish for Tarasque) is one of the statues of the Corpus Christi procession, paraded through a number of Spanish and Catalan cities, and elsewhere throughout the Iberian peninsula, for example, the cities of Granada, Toledo, and Valencia, and the city of Madrid. The first record of the tarasca legend in the peninsula comes from Seville in the year 1282, shortly after the reconquista of the city in the mid-13th century. The Spanish version is tinged with misogynistic elements, or rather repudiations against biblical and historical temptresses, with statues and statuettes of such female figures (called "") surmounted on top of the tarasca dragon. The figure atop the Granada dragon is a life-size doll resembling a retail store mannequin, and the tiny blonde-hair figurine set atop the papier-mâché tarasca of Toledo is supposed to represent Anne Boleyn. Historically in the city of Seville, it was originally a young boy called a (rather than a modeled figure) who was seated atop the processional dragon. But in 1637 the boy was replaced by a well-adorned woman, and in 1639 it was prescribed that she should be an ugly old woman. The word tarasca has entered the Spanish vocabulary in the sense of an ill-natured woman, or a "hussy". A 19th-century dictionary defines the tarasca as a "crooked, ugly, lewd, and impudent woman", and the word is known to have been used in the sense of "ugly old woman" in the 16th century. Theories Parallels Parallels have been drawn with the French legends of the Graouilli in Metz, and the Gargouille of Rouen defeated by St. Romanus. A legendary dragon or dragon-like marine creature reported to have appeared in Vietnam's Halong Bay has been called the "Tarasque" after the famed creature of Tarascon. Celtic origin hypothesis A pre-Christian Celtic origin for the legend has been proposed, and endorsed by some writers. French archeologist Isidore Gilles proposed the pre-Christian pagan origins for the legend of the tarasque, and connected with the so-called "tarasque of Noves", unearthed at the village Noves, once called "Tarasconnet". The find was a stone statue of a sharp-toothed chimeric beast with a scaly back, "crunching a human arm in its mouth". Gilles postulated this was a Celtic deified beast to which human sacrifices were offered. Gilles's theory was embraced by the Provençal poet Frederic Mistral, and Dumont was disinclined to dismiss Mistral's belief