When we talk about Spanish dance, we immediately think in castanets, because they contribute to the special character that makes it so special.

The backgrounds of the castanets come from the prehistory. Since the dance is based in rhythm and is one of the more primitive artistic ways of expression, we can conjecture that the castanets were one of the first musical instruments created by the human. It is possible to find the primitive castanets in all the continents, like a testimony of the loosen civilisations or in a more elaborated version, like happens in Spain.
The oldest precedent of the castanets can be placed in the paleolithic, and it was found in Ukraine. Is a sort of wrislets made in ivory, which makes a harmonious sound when they are clattered. Later, we can find a testimony of the use of this kind of instruments in the Egyptian, Chinese, Carthaginian or Greek civilisations.		However, in spite of this civilisations influence in later cultures, the real origin of the Spanish castanets is probably the Iberian "crusmata" (the Iberian was an antique culture, placed where actually is Spain). It is composed of two wooden pieces, two shells or two stones, which dancers and musicians played laying them held of their fingers, into the palm of the hand. Unlike the other sorts of castanets, the Iberian crusmata had the two pieces joined by a cord put through holes.
		Spanish castanets are the only that has been evolved through the time, unlike has happened in another countries, where it remains in it original form. In Spain, the castanets have been adapted to the dancer or player’s needs, obtaining the ideal form for the good performance of the rhythms that accompany the dance and the singing.
The size and de decoration of the castanets is different depends on the area and the use. In the beginning, the castanets were tied to the four fingers and shaken with the wrist. Also, for some kinds of Spanish dances, they could be fixed to de medium finger. But, in the XVIII century a great change took place, because of the new fixation system in the thumb and also for the boom in the Classical Spanish Dance, with dances like "seguidillas" or "boleros", all of them performed with the accompaniment of the castanets. Is in this moment when the classical Spanish castanets are born, very similar to the present one.

Characteristics

The name of the castanets (castañuela, in Spanish) comes from the antique Latin word "castanea", what means chestnut. In Spain, the castanets have some different names: postizas in Valencia, tarrañuelas in Asturias, jotaneos in Aragon, pitos in Galicia and palillos in Andalusia. The shapes of the castanets are so varied than it names. Before fixing it in the thumb, there were lots of different versions of the sheet according to the region. A pair of castanets is composed for a macho (male) and a hembra (female). The hembra has a higher tone; it depends of the different aperture between the two sheets.

The sheet can be divided in the following parts: - Heart (corazón): inner hollow. - Shell (concha): down rounded part of the sheet. - Ears (orejas): upper part of the sheet, with two holes through which the cord is passed. - Hinge (puente, bisagra): the thinner part, the link between the two ears. - Spot (punto): the place where the two sheets touch each other, in the shell’s base. Is very important for the quality of the sound. - Lip (labio): is the strip between the heart and the sheet’s edge. Sometimes, it has a small embossing which separates the sheet’s ears.

The castanets are been made in many different materials: metal, ivory, bone, wood or pressed cloth. But the better material has always been wood. There are castanets made in boxwood, walnut, beech, lignum vitae, rosewood, ebony, chestnut tree, oak... But the wood that has ever been the best for the castanets, is the "granadillo", a wood imported from South America and Africa, which was used in the XVIII century and which nowadays is the favourite of the professionals.
		Whichever they are their characteristics, the castanets must be tuned up in order to obtain the better sound. The only way to get it is playing them for hours. Before, it is necessary to take some precautions: the castanets must be introduced in a cover, a small bag that protects them from the environmental changes. The extreme temperatures and the damp are very harmful, and could cause splits and breaking.
		The castanets are used in the Seville’s Cathedral from the XVIII century, when they were incorporated by the seises in some religious ceremonies, like the Corpus Christi celebration or the Virgin’s Immaculate Conception. The word "seises" appears in the Spanish literature in 1439, designating a group of children who danced and sung like a religious expression. There are documents dated in 1667 that describes the clothes of these boys, as well as their dances, with accompaniment of castanets.