Firstly:
Secondly:
In a society that has only spent about 25 of the last 50 years in democracy, and the other half under fascist oversight, Carnaval celebrates everything free. It's crowning activity took place this week in Alicante and I placed myself in the middle of its craziness. Defining Carnaval's atmosphere were Masks, cross dressing, three simultaneous concerts in a small space, drinking, littering, sex, and many more forms of objects and acts belonging to the night.
My introduction to the festival came during a Spanish film class where we saw an older period film. A handsome, flirtatious, and good at cooking (an especially sexy trait round these here parts) protagonist went through brief romantic flings with each of an elderly painter's four daughters. One of these flings happened during the local village's Carnaval. The painter's gender-challenged second daughter dressed as a soldier while dressing the protagonist as a man, and aggressively seduced him, taking the role of a commandeering Spanish male during the exchange. Our professor informed us that this reversal was common during Carnaval, since Spanish women normally have to play “the reject, ignore, reject, say no, ok maybe just a little bit of talking” game. The men are pretty persistent. We also found out that Carnaval was to begin this past weekend. I was sold, assuming that the festival would at least be memorable.
My second introduction came when we picked out costumes “disfrases”. The host sister of my friend and crony Skyler happened to have an old fish costume hanging around from when she was six. Skyler put his on, and then the host sister revealed that tights would complement the outfit well. Tight would be an understatement here. What was more, downstairs was another fish costume, but this time pink instead of green. I was apprehensive, but thought it would be funny enough, and so I snapped up the opportunity. The costumes were intended for little girls, a group which as of my last checking neither Skyler nor I belonged to, and so the “pez” also barely went below waist level.
Equipped and excited for the evening, we headed to a downtown apartment where we met with several friends and continued towards “la Rambla” or the huge closed off main street hosting Carnaval. Even blocks away there were dozens of costumed Spaniards. I'd like to talk about the costumes I saw over the night before continuing since the atmosphere is impossible to grasp without picturing them.
Some of the male costumes I saw were: ninja, firefighter, professor, police officer, geisha, schoolboy, bavarian, bloody surgeon, hippy, various Beatles, and various drag queens.
Some of the female costumes I saw were: sexy ninja, sexy firefighter, sexy police officer, geisha, sexy schoolgirl, sexy bavarian (I think you get the idea at this point), and various males.
Special mention to: A group of fifteen or so people who dressed in a giant cardboard bus with windows for each party member to look out from, all the Spaniards who went as Waldo (You guys, I found him!), and some guy who made a full-body cardboard suit of Bender from Fut-o-rama.
On reaching the main street, we were greeted with a solid mass of costumed bodies stretching about a mile. Despite everyone's costumes being impressive, Skyler and I got a lot of looks. I'm guessing that much of this was owed to our status as fairly tall, gangly, pale males and the whole tights/neon effect we had going.
Three simultaneous concerts were going as well. On the main stage was a group playing some Spanish rock I recognized. What really surprised me was when they played English rock and it sounded spot on. Before my experience with Spanish English-spoken pop covers was from an American idol clone where people tried to emulate foreign language songs with horrible accents. The Bon Jovi song playing sounded like it could have been from a medium-quality Youtube rip of a CD. Not bad at all.
Everywhere in the street were discarded cups, random puddles of unidentifiable slop, and people's bags of drinks. I mention this because drinking in excess, or even explicitly outside of a bar is very rare here. I saw more people overtly holding a 40oz than I have since arriving in Spain during the first five minutes of walking towards Carnaval.
At various points I was offered drinks by complete strangers, grabbed by the throat by one of the women dressed as a police officer, asked to pose in photos by tourists clearly not from Spain, and in a position to officiate a brief mock-luchador fight between two similarly dressed people.
Eventually the crowds noise and energy were too much and I headed for home. I would have gone to bed, but my walking route ended up going through another crazy event, this time a dance party blocks away from the main street filling up a small square. I ran into two nice girls from South Africa and Barbados at the dance party and ended up talking until about 5AM, and which point I went home and got some excellent rest.
And Carnaval lasts a week!
American adults would be way too self conscious to have this many mainstreamers show up to an event like this.
Wishing you an interesting week,
Tim
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