Carnaval!

After getting home from London the day after Fat Tuesday, we thought that maybe we missed Carnaval (Carnival, the same holiday as Mardi Gras in New Orleans) celebrations in Spain. But of course, the celebrations last for more than a week, so we lucked out! One of the most popular places to go to celebrate in our area is the neighboring pueblo (town) of Miguelturra. Miguelturra is just a couple kilometers down the road from Ciudad Real and has a population of about 14,000 (versus the about 70,000 in Ciudad Real). 

Last Saturday night we threw together some last-minute costumes and headed out to join the party with some other teachers from my program. We ended up being four dominoes, two Rosie the Riveters (which was a chance to teach Spaniards a little U.S. history), and two mimes.  

Here's the domino (or dominó, en español) contingent of the group: 

We decided that with the blazer and hat Will should go by "Mr. Domino". It fits, doesn't it?

Here are our friends Marie and Jenna in Miguelturra. You can see a bonfire in the background and a bunch of other people around. The main plaza was pretty crowded despite the cold! 

And Mariana and Marie are mime-pushing us dominoes down: 

Another group in the plaza was dressed up as sharks attacking people. They put socks on their hands to make it look like someone went in head first. Hilarious! 

Here we are being silly and getting some stomach jumps in: 

One of our friends wanted a photo with some people from this group (who we thought were Game of Thrones characters, but weren't). When they saw my fancy camera they thought I was a photographer from a publication and that there might be a prize for best costume. That's when everyone nearby started running to make it in the photo! So silly. 

This group had some of the best costumes we saw - they are Russian nesting dolls! When we asked to take a photo, they got in formation from biggest to smallest and even jumped out one at a time to line up and show how each one got smaller! 

Here's another picture with them: 

Us dominoes headed home around 4am when we started to get pretty cold and tired. The rest of our crew stayed out till around 6am.  I'd like to say it is rare to be up that late, but 4am is kind of a standard weekend night out for most Spaniards (and visitors).  On the way home we spotted this awesome cafe - OBAMA II Copas! The boys are representing for Barack in small town Spain:

The next morning we dragged ourselves out of bed in time to see the Carnaval parade in Ciudad Real, the "official" end of the celebrations. Though some of my students were still having some trouble making it to class Monday morning... so I'm not sure the Sunday morning parade is the end for everyone. 

Since CR is the provincial capital, the parade includes groups from a lot of the small towns outside Ciudad Real. Each group chooses a theme and makes elaborate costumes and floats and usually has some sort of choreographed dance to take them through the parade route. 

A lot of the groups blast their music from giant speakers on their floats but some of the groups also had drumlines and marching bands. Shortly after arriving at the parade this group came through. I am not sure if they were part of the Lion King group or part of the "Africa" group, but they were fun: 

There were actually three Lion King themed groups that came through, all of them different and pretty cool. Here's a giraffe from one: 

And Pumba from a different group: 

And Rafiki holding up baby Simba to the Circle of Life song in Spanish: 

I got a real kick out of them doing the song "Be Prepared!", or in Spanish "¡Preparar!". You remember, the one Scar sings with all the hyenas? After the first choreographed part it turns into a techno hyena dance party. Awesome. Check out the video: 

Another group that came through was "Russia"-themed. They started off pretty offensive with some guys wearing fur caps holding bottles of vodka, but then they moved on to little kids dressed in furs and  looking like the stereotypes we have of Alaska. One of their floats was even a dogsled! 

These little babies were participating too, though all three were asleep: 

Here's one of the bird-themed floats. I forget what theme this group had, but they may have been trying to mimic the Brazilian Carnaval look with lots of skimpy outfits and bright colors. These girls lucked out that we had a warm day in the low 70s, otherwise these outfits would have been pretty chilly. 

This dragon float was pretty cool and was part of a "Magical World" theme that included a lot of fairies and playful looking Peter Pan types. 

These fairies were also part of the Magical World group. At the end of their choreographed danced they all fell on the ground and then got awakened by the girls with the rainbow flags. 

The parade lasted more than four hours and by then end we were ready to go home and take a little (and by little I mean 4-hour) siesta. We were very excited to get to see (and participate in) Carnaval in our area! Some of the more famous celebrations are in Cadiz in the south of Spain and in the Canary Islands, but I'm happy we got to see what our students, friends and teachers do to celebrate Carnaval. After all, when you live in the campo (countryside), your holidays better be fun!