Why do they bother us 'therians' so much?
The recurring question these last few days among friends, acquaintances, and people I've greeted has been unequivocal: "What do you think of the therians"A question imbued with unease and an almost urgent need to confirm the suspicion that, as humanity, we are going down the wrong path." The community meeting on February 21st The protest at the Arc de Triomf in Barcelona elevated the issue to the level of a collective threat when, in reality, it was nothing more than a gathering of curious teenagers. The episode was experienced as a big-game hunt, with the implicit objective of capturing one of these supposed specimens to feed social media. And theriansnot a trace.
The result? A complete fiasco that, in a few days, will deflate into a vague memory of a topic hyped up with enthusiasm because we're not focusing on the issues that truly matter. And, to complete the far-right demagoguery, there were also chants blaming the phenomenon on Pedro Sánchez.
The theriansIf they exist, they are a community of young people who claim to feel psychologically and spiritually identified with a non-human animal. They do not consider themselves animals in the literal sense, but rather understand this identification as an inner dimension—their theriotype—In these gatherings, this identity becomes visible through masks, ties, or gloves that act as devices of collective construction. They are not mere aesthetic accessories: they perform identity and reinforce belonging, two notions currently in crisis. But why does this unsettle us so much?
This is not the first time societies have sought to assimilate animal qualities. In shamanic cultures, animal skins, feathers, or heads were not disguises, but vehicles for symbolic fusion with the animal spirit, bridges between the human and natural worlds. In Ancient Egypt, many gods combined human and animal forms to embody attributes such as protection, fertility, or strength; the pharaoh, by identifying with a specific deity, also adopted these qualities.
In the Middle Ages, the bestiary functioned as a moral device that ordered the world: animals were associated with sacred figures due to their symbolic meaning. Noble heraldry adopted lions, dragons, or eagles to codify lineages and establish identities. During absolute monarchies, wearing furs like ermine, mink, or marten was not merely a matter of warmth, but rather an unequivocal marker of authority and a demonstration of dominion over nature, literally resting upon their shoulders. These same furs would later be transformed by the bourgeoisie of the 19th and 20th centuries into coats to showcase their newfound economic and social power. Fashion, in fact, has always been a technology for negotiating the boundary between nature and culture and, in doing so, reminding us that perhaps they are not as distant as we like to believe.
The intention of this article is not to normalize young people spending their free time behaving like animals. But it's not so different from what those who attend the Manga Fair dressed as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles do, and we don't announce the end of civilization because of it. Perhaps what truly bothers us isn't the mask, but the mirror. And, observing the world around us and what's to come, perhaps the temptation to dress up as a cat and start meowing isn't an extravagance, but a rather accurate metaphor for our times.
