Shrove Tuesday is a public holiday, and carnival processions take place all over Portugal. Elaborate floats are built, many of the locals dress up. Some of our friends travelled over to Loule by road to see the events, while we cycled via Alvor to Odiaxere. When we arrived at the time we supposed the carnival was due to take place, there were road barriers in place to shut off the centre, and to collect an entrance fee, but little sign of other activity.
We parked our bikes and padlocked them to a frame of pipes set in the ground, used we later heard to tether horses and cattle for the local farmers market. We sat down by the windmill on the grass bank to eat our picnic, and were immediately befriended by a very smart looking and well behaved young labrador who hoped there was something in it for him.
Gradually, signs of activity began, and then one or two floats appeared from a side street, accompanied by plenty of dressed up crew. The children, both onlookers as well as participants, were nearly all elaborately dressed, and some of the costumes were detailed and intricate. Music was playing through a public address system throughout the village. However, it was only when things were well on the way that the official group began to set up their instruments and amplifiers on the stage outside the bar. As in all things Portugese, there was minimal fuss or signs of organisation evident: no program, no opening.
The parade had no start, and no end that we could discern. There was no judging, and no prizegiving. It seems that it was all done simply for the fun of it. Gradually more and more floats appeared, and circulated around a circular route that was perhaps a quarter of a mile long. Some turned up an hour or more after the start. Some of the floats were sponsored, others appeared to be trying to make a point. Many of them must have gone around several times, and it became one continuous and colourful traffic jam. From time to time the tractor drivers or lorry drivers would be handed a drink from one of the roadside bars.
One group was advocating birth control: on bicycles, and featured exagerated models of the required devices on nose and as a hat, a tail piece, and dangling and swinging from a fishing rod! One rider was accompanied by a dummy on a tandem, rigged so that the legs moved with the pedals. Another cycle, possibly a tricycle, had a car body (like a CV2), advocating ecologically sympathetic forms of travel.
Others had politicians (an election campaign being in progress) featuring as a donkey, with speech bubbles and a rather graphic appendage directed at a chamber pot. A 'university' float featured children being taught, and people dressed up in gowns and mortar boards, but again the subject on the blackboard was 'sexology'. There was nothing particularly prudish about it!
Eventually, the group started to sing and play music in competition with the public address system, and the bucking bronco began to attract its first riders. The floats began to draw off the road, or simply disappeared. We did not stay for the evening: no doubt it would have been a long one. As we cycled into the marina we were overtaken by the birth control man, in full regalia, who found it necessary to explain to us that he had been taking part in a carnival!
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| Ecological Motoring | The birth control man |
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| A picture of the 30's | Elaborate but attractive almond blossom |
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| Some of the kids |
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| Politicians everywhere! | The bucking bronco's first challenger |