Carnaval Aguileno

It’s Saturday afternoon and there are at least two loud dance remixes blasting through the streets to accompany the dancers in the parade. It’s the fourth time the parade has passed down our street (the same people in the same costumes as far as I can tell) and we have to watch because the volume of the music makes doing anything else impossible. Carnival has once again returned to Aguilas.

Carnival started Thursday night, February 19 and has lasts until the last day of February. On the first night everyone in Águilas goes up to the castle on the hill overlooking the sea to lure down the musona, the muse of Carnival. The muse is a fantastic creature, half human, half animal, who must be led down to the center of town by her tamer. The tamer has a difficult job keeping the muse from running off the path and into people’s homes, and keeping her from “attacking” the children. She is a wild animal, after all. Meanwhile, all the Aguileños want to start getting drunk but the party can’t start until the muse reaches the Plaza de España, or “la Glorieta” as it’s referred to locally. Therefore, everyone makes it their personal responsibility to help bring the muse down by chanting, blowing conch shells, and ringing bells. The townspeople dress up in fur, feathers, shells, and a local sea grass called esparto.

La Musona

I was invited to participate in all this by my friend Violeta and her mother. We decked ourselves in esparto, potato sacks, and shell-adorned hats and hiked up the hill chanting and drinking cuerva out of plastic bottles. Cuerva, not to be confused with Cuervo, is a local specialty served only during Carnival. It’s something between jungle juice and sangria. Everyone has their own recipe, but most include red wine, lemon Fanta, cinnamon, sugar, and a mix of other liquors. Violeta’s grandmother had an excellent recipe with gin and cognac that I enjoyed a little too much.

For about the nine days of Carnival the Aguileños drink, dance, and wind their way through packed crowds thumping with the bass of house music. La Glorieta transforms from a quiet plaza with a fountain surrounded by shady palm trees and bougainvilleas to an outdoor dance club. Tents and bars- “chiringuitos”- are set up on the sidewalks. Everyone is in costume and it’s hard to tell if you’re looking at a man or a woman, a child or an adult, a white or a black person, a king or a beggar. The ironic thing about this is that Spain borrows many of its Carnival elements from Brazil, where the biggest party in the world is held every February in Rio de Janeiro. In Brazil, white people paint themselves black and black people paint themselves white to release some of the social tensions surrounding the role of race in daily life, or so say the anthropologists I studied in college. Brazil is similar to the U.S. in that it has a history of slavery and a legacy of social inequality. Therefore, in Brazil, when people play with racial identities during Carnival it has a purpose. In Spain, where that legacy of slavery doesn’t exist, it’s hard to justify or understand why it’s still okay for white people to pretend to be black. I chalk it up to a lack of political correctness and strict social rules about respect and diversity. In any case, during Carnival everything is turned upside down and inside out, and the alcohol doesn’t help.

Two in one: a white man becomes a black woman

On Friday night I was invited to participate in a parade/mob with my Spanish friends. My friend Ana’s brother played Don Carnal, another important character in the celebration. Don Carnal represents all the carnal pleasures of Carnival- the drinking, dancing, and crazy costumes- while Doña Cuaresma represents the sacrifices of Lent. The federation of Carnival associations elects the person from the best peña, or Carnival school, that will play each of these characters. Ana’s brother was chosen, so he hosted a big party at his home where friends and family gathered to start his parade/mob. Meanwhile, Doña Cuaresma had her own party and mob parade, and the two groups met in the main plaza to battle it out, the usual Temporary Pleasure vs. Eternal Salvation debate. Natch, I was in the Pleasure camp with Don Carnal.

Ana and her brother, Don Carnal

On Saturday the first big parade marched through the streets. This is the sort of thing you’ve probably seen in pictures of the Brazilian Carnival: beautiful ladies with lots of makeup and glitter, tight costumes, and huge feather headdresses. The Saturday night parade lasted five hours, and smaller versions were performed the following two days. Suffice it to say I was sick of the same four dance hits by the end of the weekend. Overall it was fun to see, and even more fun to participate in. After hearing “Just wait ‘til Carnival comes!” for five months, I can finally understand the excited anticipation.