The Madrigals (also known as La Familia Madrigal) are a magical and famous family featured in the 2021 Disney animated feature film Encanto. They live in a magical house called the Casa Madrigal, which is located in the Colombian village of Encanto.
The family serves as an important pillar of their community, using their magical gifts to the benefit of the people. The family's matriarch, Alma, serves as a leader-like figure to the village and the Madrigals are 13 people.
Background[]
50 years before the start of the film, when Alma Madrigal's triplets had just been born, hostile soldiers on horseback conquered the village they used to call home. The townspeople fled, hoping to find a new home, and when the soldiers came after them, Alma's beloved husband, Pedro Madrigal sacrificed himself to the soldiers as a distraction, and gave his family and community time to escape. After Pedro was killed, the candle he had given to Alma was imbued with magic, born from her love for her family[1], and became a magical flame that could never go out. It released a wave of magic that repelled the soldiers away and rose the mountains that now surround the land. From the candle also came the Casa Madrigal, a sentient, shapeshifting house where the Madrigal Family would live from then on.
As the rightful owner of the magic candle and Pedro's widow, the other refugees came to view Alma as a leader, and together they build a village, Encanto, within the magical mountains.
Pictures of the Madrigals from the days they each received their gifts.
Though Alma herself never got one, every child born into the Madrigal Family was blessed with a magical gift when they came of age on their fifth birthday. Using their fantastical gifts, the Madrigals swore to always help those around them to earn the miracle that gave them so much, they turned the Encanto within those mountains into a paradise and safe haven. The only exception was Alma's youngest granddaughter, Mirabel, who was the only person not to be blessed with a gift. Nevertheless, the Madrigal family are trusted members of their community and are looked upon with respect and admiration by the other townspeople.
Gift Ceremony[]
Antonio wearing his gift ceremony outfit.
Madrigal children receive their magical gift on their fifth birthday, an age where a child's innate personality and talents start to set, and a large celebration at the Casita is held in their honor.[2] Before reaching the age of five, a blank glowing door will start forming and be ready by the time of the child's birthday.[3] The gift bestowed to a child is a reflection of their innate personality and family perception/role. The gift just magnifies who they already are.[4][5]
As a family tradition, gift ceremonies always begin at 7 P.M. and the child will don a white outfit, which is followed by a speech delivered by Alma. After walking to their door, the Madrigal child will vow to use their gift for the benefit of their community and touch the doorknob of their door. An event will occur to demonstrate the gift that is received and the door will display a unique design with the child's name and image. The only exception was Mirabel's ceremony, where her door simply disappeared after she touched its knob. If it ends up being successful, though, Abuela Alma will announce "We have a new gift!" while fireworks set off and everyone cheers for the Madrigal child who got the gift.
It also seems customary that a picture is taken with Alma, the candle, and the Madrigal children in front of their magical door after the ceremonies, which is then proudly hung near Alma's bedroom in the Casita. The gifts can come in different ways, such as personality traits and likes.
Members[]
Family Tree[]
Generations[]
- Pedro Madrigal †: Abuelo Pedro was the patriarch of the Madrigal family. He was Alma's husband and father of Julieta, Pepa, and Bruno. When the triplets were born, a civil unrest struck his town, so he was forced to leave his home with his wife, his infant children, and the townspeople. While fleeing the village, Pedro sacrificed himself to the soldiers who were pursuing them, allowing Alma and their children to escape but at the cost of his life. At that moment, the candle his wife was holding onto was imbued with magic, and by a miracle, Alma and her three children were presented with Casa Madrigal in an Encanto. There, she became the matriarch of the Madrigal family, overseeing the passing-down of the candle's magic to her and Pedro's descendants, as well as preserving the town.
- Alma Madrigal: Abuela Alma is the matriarch of the Madrigal family. When she was younger — when Julieta, Pepa, and Bruno were just born - a miracle blessed them with the candle she was given by her husband before his death, creating La Casa Madrigal. From then to this day, every child born in the family is blessed with their own unique gift, except Mirabel. From then, she has had the responsibility of being in charge of her family's magic.
- Agustín Madrigal: Agustín is Julieta's husband and father of Isabela, Luisa, and Mirabel. Due to being accident-prone, Agustín often needed to be healed, which led him to fall in love with Julieta, whose magical gift is healing people with her cooking. He eventually married Julieta and had Mirabel, Luisa, and Isabela. Since he married into the family, Agustín has no magical gift of his own, just like Pepa's husband, Félix. A running gag is that he keeps getting stung by bees, which his wife, Julieta often has to heal him for.
- Félix Madrigal: Félix is Pepa's husband and father of Dolores, Camilo, and Antonio. He is a fun-loving man and does well to balance out his emotional wife, Pepa and her mood swings. As he married into the family, Félix lacks a magical gift of his own, just like Julieta's husband, Agustin, but he is a humorous and comedic man who easily puts on a smile to those around him, so he has no problem in fitting into the family.
- Isabela Madrigal: Isabela is the eldest daughter and firstborn child of Julieta and Agustín Madrigal, and firstborn grandchild of the Madrigal family. She has the ability to conjure and control plant life, from flowers like roses to vines and trees. Due to expectations of perfection, Isabela behaves like a diva, obsessed with beauty and admiration in her princess-like life, and is also spiteful towards her youngest sister Mirabel. It is later revealed that she craves being herself instead of being "perfect".
- Luisa Madrigal: Luisa is Julieta and Agustín's second daughter and middle child, who is gifted with superhuman strength. She is able to move mountains, shift churches and houses, lift bridges, carry multiple donkeys on her shoulders, and effortlessly smash falling boulders. However, her physical prowess has her family and community take advantage of it, unknowingly putting a great deal of emotional burden on her shoulders as she tries to please her family and the town. She never complains about being the work she is made to do, leading to the pressure fracturing her mental health.
- Mirabel Madrigal: Mirabel is the youngest daughter of Julieta and Agustín, and the only Madrigal child who did not get a gift by no fault of her own. As a result of this phenomenon that she is unable to control, she is frequently shoved away by some members of her family and the villagers, who push her to the sidelines and view her as useless. However, when the family's magic powers are in danger of fading away, Mirabel may be the family's only hope for restoring the miracle.
- Dolores Madrigal: Dolores is Pepa and Félix's only daughter and firstborn child. She has supersonic hearing, and can hear even a pin drop. She's so skilled, in fact, that she can even hear Luisa's eye twitching all night. Her enhanced hearing allows her to hear everything in the village, which causes chaos when she overhears Mirabel and Agustin quietly discussing the family's dying magic but is completely unable to refrain herself from snitching.
- Camilo Madrigal: Camilo is Pepa and Félix's oldest son and middle child. He can shape-shift to take on the appearance of other people. He uses his powers to help out around town, such as shapeshifting into an exhausted new mother and cradling her baby while letting the actual woman rest, or in mischievous ways, such as imitating his sister Dolores so he can get more food at breakfast. He also loves playing pranks, frequently turning into Isabela's hunky suitor Mariano to tease her as the families try to arrange for their marriage.
- Antonio Madrigal: Antonio is Pepa and Félix's youngest son and Mirabel's favorite cousin, and the last born grandchild. He is gentle and warm, and from his childlike innocence he forges a close bond with Mirabel, who accompanies him in his rite of passage during the gift ceremony. He is bestowed with the ability to speak to animals. He commands toucans, jaguars, capybaras, and even the rats in the family home, who let him know about his long-lost uncle Bruno living in the walls of Casita.
Trivia[]
- According to Jared Bush, children that are adopted into the Madrigal family could receive a magical gift, since the magic is tied to the Madrigal through family love and unity, not by blood. However, it's ambiguous whether being beyond the traditional age of 5 years old would prevent the adopted child from getting a gift.[6][7][8] Bush states that adoptive Madrigals older than 5 would likely receive a gift.[9][10]
- According to Jared Bush, it's possible for Madrigal members to have the same magical gift within the same generation, but unlikely to really occur and is more likely to repeat in later generations.[11]
- Out of all the Madrigals with a magical door, only Dolores and Bruno have their eyes open, due to the fact that their gifts are sensory-related.
- Apparently, the Madrigal family doesn't follow traditional Colombian naming customs. In Colombia, like in most Spanish speaking countries, both spouses keep their surnames, and people have two surnames: the first is the father's surname and the second is the mother's maiden surname. So if they followed this tradition, all of the grandchildren would have Madrigal as their second surname and none of them would pass it on to their own children. All of this is assuming Madrigal was Pedro's surname, and not Alma's. In the latter case, Mirabel, her sisters, and her cousins would have lost this surname already.
- When designing the Madrigals, the staff gave them distinct color palettes so that the "audiences can track who's who and who which member is from each side of the family", dressing Julieta's family in cool colors (such as blue, purple and white) and Pepa's family with warm colors (such as red and yellow).[12]
- Notably, while Julieta's side of the family wears moon colors and Pepa's side wears sun colors, Bruno's outfit consists of earth tones (such as green and brown). Alma's outfit consists of magenta and black (which could be said to represent certain flowers in a way, another thing going with nature and earth)
- While butterflies are largely associated with the Madrigal family as a whole, each Madrigal has a particular design motif that symbolize their gift; Antonio has animal prints on his jacket, Dolores has sound-wave and flower-like prints on her blouse, skirt, and bow, Julieta has plant prints and a mortar and pestle print on her apron, Isabela has flower prints on her dress, Camilo has chameleon prints on his ruana, sandals, and collar, Luisa has dumbbell prints on her wristbands and skirt, Pepa has sun, raindrop, and lightningbolt-prints on her outfit, lightningbolt-prints on her ribbon, and wears sun earrings, and Bruno has hourglass prints on his ruana.
- Mirabel has all of these different designs on her blouse and skirt to show her affinity with and pride for her family.[13][14] She also has butterfly designs on her blouse and skirt; as does Alma, who also has mountain-like designs on her dress, orange tear-drop circles on her collar, and flower-like designs on her, resembling the Miracle Candle and her responsibility of being in charge of her family's magic.
- The triplets follow the three tenses with their gifts; Julieta heals past wounds, Pepa affects the present weather, and Bruno predicts future events.
- Additionally, Julieta's daughters and Pepa's children follow the Three Pillars of Freemasonry and the Three Wise Monkeys respectively. Isabela is beauty due to her looks and growing pretty flowers, Luisa is strength since she possesses super strength, and Mirabel is wisdom by helping the family see their worth beyond magic. Dolores is "hear no evil" with her enhanced hearing, Camilo is "see no evil" through shapeshifting, and Antonio is "speak no evil" by talking to animals.
- The Madrigals are similar to the Riveras from Coco:
- They are multigenerational families who have a Hispanic ethnicity (Mexican, Colombian) and fervently follow a tradition.
- They live in fictional towns.
- The families have been affected by a tragedy in their beginnings that cost them their patriarch, which causing their widowed matriarch to become hardened while raising their family.
- A young member (the protagonist) differentiates from the rest of the family which alienates them and puts them at odds with the matriarch; Miguel and Mirabel both have an intense argument with their grandmothers.
- There is a black sheep that they refused to talk about for leaving the family.
- The families' issues are resolved when the younger member learns more about their family's past and the matriarch realizes how their unresolved grief and well-intentioned actions have affected the family's unity.
- Julieta, Pepa, Bruno, and Antonio are the only members of the family whose powers weren't shown fading onscreen, likely because they are all tied to an external factor (food, emotions, a ritual, and animals respectively).
- Most male members have names that end with an "o", while most female members have names that end with an "a".
- Félix, Agustín, Dolores, and Mirabel are all exceptions to this. Coincidentally, both male exceptions got married into the family while the females are inversely the oldest and youngest of their siblings.
- In Disney's Lyric Video songs for Encanto, each Madrigal has a different colored text for their lyrics; Alma's is lavender, Pepa's is sunny yellow, Bruno's is a light green, Julieta's is a greenish teal, Agustín's is dark azure, Félix's is yellowish orange, Dolores' is crimson red, Camilo's is vermilion, Antonio's is a marmalade-like color, Isabela's is neon magenta, Luisa's is dark periwinkle, and Mirabel's is light sky blue.
- With an addition, the towns-folk people have a faded-like green color and Mariano Guzmán has purple.
- But for some reason, in the lyric video for "Surface Pressure", the text is the same color as Mirabel, but Luisa is the one singing. This is probably because she is the only one singing.
- If multiple people are singing the same line at the same time, their lyric colors mix in a gradient way, but in "What Else Can I Do?", during the parts where Isabela and Mirabel both sing, it appears that their colors are mixed into one singular color instead of separated.
- In the credits of Encanto (and briefly shown in the movie), each Madrigal has a plate that they have for meals, though they are kind of unclear; One plate decorated with the candles and pink flowers, resembling Alma, one plate is decorated with suns and peach-colored flowers, resembling Pepa, one plate is decorated with mortar and pestles with plants and purple flowers, resembling Julieta, one plate is decorated with sound-waves and soft hot pink flowers, resembling Dolores, one is decorated with chameleons, leaves, and pink flowers, resembling Camilo, one is decorated with some kind of presumable figure (maybe an animal) and orange flowers, seemingly resembling Antonio, one is decorated with multiple magenta, purple, and pink flowers, resembling Isabela, one is decorated with blue and red dumbells with pink flowers, resembling Luisa, and one is decorated with hourglasses, plants, and pink flowers, resembling Bruno.
- The rest of the plates seem to be the same design (teal plant with other darker teal plants and pink flowers) but different spelled names at the bottom, these seemingly going to Agustín, Félix, and Mirabel, most likely due to all three lacking gifts (excluding Alma).
- The Madrigal children go to school.[15]
- According to technical supervisor Nadim Sinno, the members of the Madrigal family use 3B texture for their different and diverse hair styles, which the animation department had to learn to make the characters' hair realistic.
- New technology was also used by animators to give each character's eyes more depth and speckled highlights.
Gallery[]
Screenshots[]
Mirabel introducing the Madrigal family
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.jpg "Chaos at the Madrigal dinner (3).jpg (222 KB)")
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.png "Casita and The Madrigals recovering the magic (1).png (1.91 MB)")
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Family photo (with Mirabel and Bruno)
Miscellaneous[]
Concept color key of the Madrigals
Family Tree with Bruno
The Madrigals figurine set
Mirabel's symbols on her dress that represent each of her family members that contain magical abilities (apart from Bruno)
Mirabel next to a mural of all of the Madrigals at Disneyland
References[]
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