Written by Game: Sabanada or Valencian Dinner "*Sabanasa"
The sabanada or Valencian dinner is a male sexual game to be played in groups, documented as historical and native to the Valencian Country. Although its exact age is not well known, its origins seem to trace back to the homosexual erotic practices of the Middle Ages, which were quite common until Catholicism began to criminalize them and make them punishable as sodomy from the 11th century.
This sexual test consists of a group of men sitting around a table covered with a wide sheet or cloak. Thus, their legs and sexual organs are covered by the length of a single garment. Under the table, another man (or a woman) must masturbate or perform oral sex on one of the participants, who must disguise it as best as he can so that the others do not know he is the one receiving pleasure. It bears some resemblance to other erotic and medieval games among men—especially in Reus—such as gorigorio (or gorrigorri).
The presence of the sheet in the popular Valencian imagination and in historical bibliography had significantly fallen into oblivion until the publication in 2014 of the first version of the Valencian Normative Dictionary, when the Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua included and recovered various genuine words and meanings that had never been collected before in the lexicographic field. The word "llençolada".
The tradition goes back a long way, as explained by writer Ferran Torrent, and we can still trace back several centuries to find similar documented practices in the Valencian prisons of the 17th century. In this case, it was the "gorrigorri", a game in which a group of men, playing the role of cardinals, would undress another, figuratively the pope, who would be left completely naked and bless them one by one, anointing them with genitalia dipped in water. This is explained by American professor Cristian Berco in Sexual Hierarchies, Public Status (2007), one of the books dedicated to the study of the persecution of male homosexuality in the ancient Crown of Aragon that has appeared in recent years.
I propose another game, how about we all create some rules for the *Sabanasa?
*Sabanasa, name given by Vaduz70