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Carnival is back to Santa Cruz de Tenerife and this year, the central theme of the Santa Cruz de Tenerife Carnival 2007 is the world of fashion. The streets of Tenerife’s capital are flooded with revelers from all over the world who come to together to celebrate the most Brazilian of all Spain’s Carnival celebrations. For a few days there are no limits, and the only rule is complete abandon, taboos and norms disappear. The purest, most complete expression of freedom is what defines Carnival in Santa Cruz.

Preparations begin weeks or even months in advance, but the festival proper begins a week before Ash Wednesday with the election of the carnival queen, continuing with a cabalgata (horse parade) and a whole weekend of mad street partying and revelry. The Saturday before Carnival, all Carnival groups participate in the opening parade: Brazilian style groups, bands of adult and child street musicians, choirs, and thousands and thousands of people in costume. The Carnival Queen is selected from among the parade’s most beautiful girls, who are then royally outfitted in gorgeous dresses specifically designed for the occasion. For an island that until very recently was very puritanical some of the costumes are little more than bikinis with feathered head dresses or see through tops with a couple of strategically placed stars.

The choosing of the carnival queen is an all night, eagerly awaited, televised spectacle; the dresses for this are sponsored by various larger local companies with the costs running into many thousands of Euros. These dresses are used once only and the successful ones are often housed in especially built display rooms at or near to the receptions or showrooms of the sponsoring companies. Recently the organising committee has had to limit the overall size of the creations (dresses) many of which have wheels built in to assist the queen’s movement, yes honestly, take a good look at the photos and compare the height of the girls with the height and width of the dresses. As if a carnival queen wasn’t enough there are also competitions for the queen of seniors and a children’s queen. In some of the towns of Tenerife as well as other islands there is also a ‘drag queen of carnival’.

There are also live bands and dancing in the open air for everyone most nights until daylight. There are official stalls all around the streets selling drinks and ‘tapas’ to the thirsty, hungry revellers, these stalls and their positions are bid for by tender each year and sell for amazing amounts of money to help offset the huge costs of carnival. All manner of other events are grouped under the banner of carnival from football to clay pigeon shooting to vintage car rallies, there is literally something for everyone.

On Carnival Tuesday participants experience the festival’s apotheosis in an enclosure in which all participants gather; it is the culmination of what has truly been a metamorphosis, the closing of this long parenthesis in the day-to-day life of Tenerife which its Carnival celebration represents. This spectacular parade is known as “El Coso.”

The next day the Burial of the Sardine (entierro de la sardina), where a gigantic effigy of a fish is buried, marks the end of the festivities, a farewell to the flesh and the death of the spirit of Carnival, symbolised by the sardine who is carried through the streets on a funeral bier, and is then set on fire and consumed by the flames to the despair of the entourage of inconsolable and “grief-stricken” widows, widowers and mourners. The final ending, however, is really the celebration of the “Piñata Chica” at the weekend, with shows, dances and parades.

Useful Info
Carnaval de Tenerife
Dates: 01/29/2007 – 02/25/2007
Tourist Office:  Plaza  de España, 1
38002 Santa Cruz de Tenerife (Tenerife)
Phone: +34 922239811 +34 922239592 
Fax +34 922239812

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 8th, 2007 at 11:02 am and is filed under Nightime, Daytime, Canary Islands. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.