Carnival in Spain - Tenerife & Cadiz
When is Carnival?
The carnival craziness kicks into high gear sometime in February, just before the beginning of the 40 days of Lent.
Where is Carnival?
While many cities throughout Spain get revved up for smaller Carnival celebrations of their own, Cádiz and Tenerife's Santa Cruz are by no doubt in a class of their own.
Carnival Traditions
The Carnival festivities in both cities, while each city has their unique traditions, celebrate the common themes of joy and personal expresion to the maximum.
Carnival in Tenerife
In Tenerife's Santa Cruz, whose version bears a strong resemblance to the Carnival in Brazil, features parades with floats, groups performing songs, Brazilian-style groups, and thousands upon thousands of people decked out in costume. Street musicians constantly fill the streets, various types of music electrify the air, and the colors and costumes simply delight the view. Festive parades snake through the city featuring energetic music groups and vibrantly-costumed performers. One of the most celebrated traditions is the selection of each year's Carnival Queen from the parade's most beautiful girls - the elaborate costumes that these girls don take months to create and often weigh more than 100 kilograms (220 pounds)!
Carnival in Cádiz
From "Quasimodo Sunday" until "Piñata Sunday" Carnival takes over Cádiz and, like in Tenerife, the festival bursts with color, music, and culture. The normally laid-back city becomes one huge street party, whose pinnacle is huge competition in which street musicians, choirs, quartets, compasas and chirigotas compete to create the most visually and musically original stage performances. After the competition, both winners and losers spill out in the Cádiz streets, join in the partying, and move through the Old Quarter singing songs, often with risqué, erotic, or satirical themes. If you're heading south for the festivities, a costume is a must as you'll stick out if you go wearing simple jeans and a t-shirt. Spaniards flock to Cádiz from all over in groups wearing themed costumes that often poke fun of institutions, politics, celebrities, and current events. Nowhere else can you see flocks of nuns partying in the streets with "bird flu" chickens.
History of Carnival
These crazy fiestas have certainly evolved quite a bit when you consider how they started. Catholics in Italy began a tradition of holding a costume festival just before the commencement of Lent. Since Catholics aren't supposed to eat meat during those 40 days and 40 nights prior to Easter, they called this festival "carnevale," which roughly means "to put away the meat." The infamous Fat Tuesday began because Catholics had to use up all of the meat and butter before the following day, Ash Wednesday, which by its very name seemed to have often resulted in quite the day of consumption.
In Tenerife, where the celebrations resemble those of Brazil, the huge elaborate costumes and massive use of brilliantly-colored feathers has its origins in African culture. It's no surprise, as the Canary Islands are actually closer to Africa than to Spain.
