Lord Carnal and Lady Lent

Today is Shrove Tuesday, the last day before Lent. Mardi Gras, Fat Tuesday. Time for a bit of a knees up before the sackcloth and ashes of Lent. No booze for forty days, no chocolate. Pancake day.

As a young person I knew about Carnival in Rio. Lots of people in feathers, well women really. In fact some of them without many feathers at all: drumming and dancing, a wild bacchanalia. I had no idea why. It was something they did in Rio. Just like mushy peas and mint sauce in Yarmouth. Years later I realised that Mardi Gras in New Orleans was something akin though, to be honest, I still associate Mardi Gras with the backdrop to the druggy scene in Easy Rider.

I was taken a bit by surprise by Carnival by the Carnaval of here. I suppose it was when we lived in Cartagena. All of a sudden there was Rio passing in front of Zara and Druni the perfume shop. Some of the feathers the women dragged behind them were so wide that they touched both sides of the narrow street. There were groups of singers too. The costumes were all a bit too much falling down trousers and squirty flowers, too slapstick, for me and the songs were incomprehensible but Spanish people roared with laughter. The funny satirical songs are called chirigotas. If they are important in Cartagena then they are absolutely enormous in Cádiz. The chirigotas are so ingrained in Spanish culture that they get a brief slot on the national news on the telly.

When we'd lived in Santa Pola I don't think I'd ever realised there was a carnival procession there, nor in Pinoso. In Ciudad Rodrigo, where we lived for a while, Carnaval was a big event but there the scantily clad women and be-sequinned and top hatted men were supplanted by bulls running through the street.

But now I know about Carnaval, at least I know it is celebrated in Spain. I know it's big in Cádiz and monstrous in Tenerife. Round here Torrevieja and Aguilas and even Cabezo de Torres celebrate Carnaval flamboyantly with big processions and often with drag queens in impossibly high heels. Somebody told me that in Jumilla the other day part of the parade showed a disinterred Franco carried high on the shoulders of bare chested soldiers. Irreverence for two Spanish legends in one! Here in Pinoso, last Saturday, we had a nice little parade without sequins and without drag queens or satirical songs but with lots of people we knew.

Carnaval, Carnaval

In the UK there's Pancake Day, Shrove Tuesday - today. I'm sure there used to be a pancake race between a couple of local mayors where I lived for a while in Huntingdon. Towards the end of the early evening news there'll be school fete type footage of some people somewhere flipping pancakes as they run. Tomorrow you may even see a couple of people with ash crosses on their forehead. Exciting times. Now in Rio on the other hand at carnival time hundreds of scantily clad people dance around the streets.

In Spain it's Carnaval time too. In Pinoso we have nice little parade with hand made costumes. It's one of the few Spanish events that gets shunted to the nearest available weekend rather than taking place on the correct date or day. As far as I knew carnaval (with an a not an i) was a last gasp effort to have a good time before giving up the pleasures of whatever it is that good folk give up for Lent. I'd never thought much more about it before I decided to write this blog.

I was vaguely aware that there are big events in the Canary Islands and in Cadiz but I sort of presumed that they were all mini versions of Rio. Lots of cleavage, lots of sequinned top hats, bright colours, feathers, make-up applied with a trowel and more and more specific gay presence. I suppose I sort of knew that the name came from the word that means meat or flesh and that it was a bit of a celebration of the flesh, a bit carnal, a bit saucy. Nonetheless I was pretty surprised, when we saw our first carnaval processions in Cartagena. Those poor girls were sure to get a chill. Carnaval was big in Cartagena. Ordinary people, the people I worked with, would hire or make complicated fancy dress costumes and set out as gangs of droogs or as all the characters from the Wizard of Oz just to go out for a drink. It's biggish all over. The schools usually have youngsters in fancy dress in the run up to Carnaval.

Nearish to home (the round trip was 325km so it's not that near) the smallish Murcian town of Aguilas has a reputation for putting on a big Carnaval do despite only having a population of 35,000. We went to have a look on Sunday and the parade was brilliant. Band after band of just what we expected. Dancing troupes, groups of people acting out political satire and lots and lots of remarkably ornate floats with very loud music. We watched for over three and a half hours before giving up. My photo taking was somewhat hampered because the only seats we were able to buy, at 12€ a go, were in the branches of a small, ornamental, tree which reduced my field of view considerably. So there are almost no panoramic shots to show the breadth of the participation.

When I did a bit of background checking for the blog I found that the Spanish version of Carnaval owes a lot to a book called El libro de buen amor, the Book of Good Love written by Juan Ruiz who went under the name of el arcipreste de Hita. It's a book of Spanish poetry written around 1330. It's one of those works that unfortunate Spanish schoolchildren are forced to read. In the book there is a battle between don Carnal and doña Cuaresma. So a battle between a sort of  "Lord Lust" and "Lady Lent". Lent wins of course but only for the next forty days after which old lust runs free again. The book provides the basis for most of the Spanish events.

Along the way I found that, in Aguilas, a beast is loosed called the Mussona - a sort of half human, half animal figure which represents the duality of people - half civilised and half wild. If the beast was there when we were I must have blinked or looked the wrong way. Mind you I'm not even sure if the yellow bloke with the exposed (cloth) penis was don Carnal or not. I saw a lot of sequins and lots of feathers though.

Aguilas is in most of the "Top 10" type lists for Carnavales in the Spanish media along with the Canary island and Cadiz. In fact there are lots of competing lists. Ciudad Rodrigo, where we lived for a while, and where the event is characterised by bull running, gets mentioned in several but there are some really odd ones with lots of obviously pagan characters still doing the rounds. In Villanueva a wooden headed cloth and straw figure called El Peropalo is the centre of attention or in Laza in Ourense it's el Peliqueiro who has a big semicircular hat and mask combination with pigtails and flouncy pantaloons. In Tarragona there's a lot of devil burning and in Badajoz all the lists say that nobody goes into the street unless they are in fancy dress.

In fact it looks to me as though we have Carnavales a plenty to keep us in something to do each year for quite a long time yet. Maggie, you have been warned.