Players and cards
Four players form two fixed partnerships. Use a 48-card Spanish deck: Coins, Cups, Swords and Batons, numbered 1–12. Deal all cards, four at a time, so everyone receives twelve.
Catalan partnership game · 4 players
Butifarra.
Read every trick carefully: in this Catalan classic, even your lowest card can reveal something.
Y
YouPartner: North
01 How to play
Every card
speaks.
At this table, you partner North against East and West. The playable rules use the stricter eastern form of Butifarra.
Ranks and values
From strongest to weakest: 9 (Manilla), Ace (1), King (12), Horse (11), Jack (10), 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2. Cards show S for Sota (Jack), C for Cavall (Horse), and R for Rei (King). The five strongest ranks score 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1 point respectively. Other cards score zero.
Choose trumps
The dealer names one suit as trumps, declares Botifarra with no trumps, or passes the choice to their partner. A partner who receives the choice must decide. A Botifarra hand doubles the eventual score.
Optional doubles
The other team may call Contrar to double the score. The dealer's team may reply with Recontrar, and the opponents may answer with Sant Vicens. Each accepted call doubles again. Either side may pass and start play.
Follow and beat
The player after the dealer leads; the winner leads next. You must follow the led suit if you can. If an opponent is currently winning, you must play a card that takes the trick if possible, including a trump when void in the led suit. The highest trump wins; otherwise the highest led-suit card wins.
Eastern restrictions
When you cannot take an opponent's winning trick, play your lowest card in the suit you choose. If your partner is winning, you may beat them, give them a scoring card, or play your lowest card of a suit. A second player who cannot follow suit may also discard a scoring card while hoping their partner wins.
Score the hand
Each trick adds one point to the value of its four cards. Across twelve tricks there are always 72 points. Only a team taking more than 36 scores: it adds its excess over 36, multiplied by any doubles. A 36–36 hand scores nothing. First to 101 wins the match.
02 History & variants
A quieter
contest.
From Manilla to Catalonia
Butifarra, or Botifarra in Catalan, developed in Catalonia in the twentieth century from the Manilla family. Its strict play rules make an ordinary low card informative: the other players may deduce that you were obliged to play it. The game is strongly associated with Catalonia and is also played in nearby parts of Spain.
The game rewards careful memory and cooperation. A partner can feed points to a winning trick, while a player who cannot beat an opponent may be forced to reveal the bottom of a suit.
Eastern and western tables
The eastern form used here applies the lowest-card and scoring-card restrictions. Western tables usually keep the obligation to follow suit and beat an opponent when possible, but allow freer discards. Groups also vary the multiplier ladder, target score and treatment of duplicate hands in tournaments.
Botifarra means the no-trump declaration as well as the game's Catalan name. On a no-trump hand, no suit can overtake a card from the suit led merely by being played later.