The sardine has exploded - it must be all over for another year.

So, the big finale. In Brazil, they mark Mardi Gras with huge, glamorous parades and elaborate costumes. In New Orleans they throw beads into the crowd, decorate coconuts and bake cakes with tiny baby figurines in them, purportedly to represent Jesus. Here, the flouring reaches its epic climax, the folion all come together for the burning of the lardeiros and a funeral is held for a giant sardine. (I know. I'll come back to that later.)

I've never been to Glastonbury but veterans all seem to talk about the mud years. Well here in Viana the rain, if it comes on the Tuesday as it did this year, turns the ground not into mud but glue. We'd been lucky so far this year but on Tuesday it absolutely shat down, thinning the numbers who'd usually attend - people don't want to ruin €300+ drums - and ensuring anybody who did attend will be picking rock-hard globules of solidified flour out of their hair and ears for the next couple of days, regardless of how assiduously they try to wash them out.

The lardeiros, as I've said in earlier entries, are the Carnival made manifest, and they're set ablaze at midnight on Shrove Tuesday (or Mardi Gras, or Fat Tuesday, or whatever you want to call it), bringing the flour attacks to a close. As you can imagine this makes people go all out to get the last flourings in for another year. Usually pretty much anybody who has a drum or an aixada will be there, beating the folion as the Lardeiros burn. It's a pretty visceral experience even when the square isn't completely packed because of the weather. This film is from 2012:

The world feels like it's shaking with the noise - the thunder of drums and trowels being struck is absolutely deafening. Bangers and aerosols placed inside the effigies pop and explode while this is happening. How are they set on fire? I'm glad you asked. In a move which would give any H&S exec in Britain palpitations, a bloke who may or may not have had a couple of cold drinks himself is hoisted up to the figures on the back of one of those telescopic platform things, soaks them in something highly flammable like petrol or whatever it is, and then torches them using a long, burning stick from the ground.

And how they burn. What remains is often still smoking well into the next day:

Ouch. Gonna need some cream on that.
Photo: Emilio Ortiz Rodriguez

If the bars were busy on the weekend, they're absolutely heaving on Tuesday. One or two of the bars' owners take the opportunity to close for the night, or part of the night, to have one Carnival night out themselves, forcing more people into fewer bars. I knocked it off at about 2am this year but for most people this is the night that goes on 'til 7 or 8 in the morning. There's usually a band - cancelled this year because of the heavy rain - and a costume competition, and they don't even start until after the lardeiros burn.

Wednesday marks an almost instant return to the village's usual quiet. Immediately there are noticeably fewer people about and the streets are cleaned of the flour. Most bars are closed for a clean-up which takes a good couple of days, and some remain closed for a few days' well-earned rest. It just leaves the sardine funeral to the year-rounders or the few who hang back beyond the end of Carnival.

Oh yes, the sardine funeral. In another pyromaniacal episode, a six-foot-long sardine, constructed of a cage wrapped in tin foil and, once again, filled with explosive materials, is mounted on a trailer and paraded through the town. Locals follow, in funereal black, lamenting the sardine's passing. When it reaches the designated spot in the Cabo da Vila, the old town surrounding the castle, it burns in similar fashion to the lardeiros while people stand ludicrously close to it and await the comestibles. Free red wine is distributed liberally, and real sardines - barbecued on an enormous fire at the scene and served on bread - are consumed in large numbers.

At the end there are torrijas, a sort of cinnamony French toast. These are not much to look at but they're absolutely delicious and many of the locals make them, meaning each one you sample is slightly different from the one before. I can't tell you how many of these I can wolf down but my record doesn't bear imparting here, on account of the shame it would bring me to report it.

A stroll back down the hill for a coffee in the nearest bar and that really is it. All over bar the blogging, until the sound of the folion beats over the village early next year and heralds the coming of another Carnival. The locals hold a funeral, I think, because they feel genuinely sad for Carnival's passing. Its importance to them finds arcane expression by this burning of the sardine effigy, and if that doesn't seem to make any sense, then you need to come out here and experience this for yourself to see what I mean.

Comadre mia!

So Thursday was comadres, the day the women have free rein to go after the men and one of the biggest nights of the Carnival. It is, fairly understandably, a much bigger night in terms of numbers of people going out than compadres. On Wednesday night, at midnight, the Lardeira is hoisted into place alongside her male counterpart. The ladies then have 24 hours of flouring without comeback from the lads. This is an appalling photo - sorry - but gives some impression at least. As you can see, they've both been amended so they're now more typically - how can I put this? - profane.

The word Carnival has its roots in the Latin 'carnem' or
'carn-', meaning 'flesh'. That carnal route is still
pretty evident in the Lardeiros.

On Thursday, generally, groups of women will gather in themed fancy dress, organise a large dinner somewhere and then hit the bars for copas and dancing. Flour and folion are of course much in evidence too. It can be a long night for many - I certainly woke up with an inexplicable(!) headache on Friday. Staying out 'til six or seven in the morning is not uncommon, though age and drink-lightweight tendencies mean I don't last until such rarefied hours.

A note on the flour. Nobody has been able to give me a definitive answer on when it started, or why. There are conflicting theories, but it's certainly old, and it's (to my knowledge) confined to a small corner of Galicia. Traditions evolve, of course, but the classic delivery should be a handful applied to the face, below the nose, and rubbed in from ear to ear, preferably catching the victim completely by surprise. You should go home with the bottom half of your face completely white, like you've been bobbing for apples in a basin full of cocaine. A clean face at the end of such an evening doesn't say much for your popularity. (Or it speaks well of your powers of evasion and sprint speed).

I have of course seen variations on this theme. Some young'uns (tsk) pull a trailer around behind a 4x4 and hurl flourballs of the white stuff in crunched up newspaper. And a couple of years back another wrinkle caught out acquaintances of ours - we had to meet a Brit and an American who were friends of friends, who'd heard about this and came to see it. Though we didn't know them, they were easy to spot - wearing clean, respectable clothes, standing still in the square watching what was happening with bewildered faces, they made easy targets. We'd barely had a chance to introduce ourselves before the American found herself deposited into a bath, filled with flour and being dragged around town, to better enfariñar anybody who caught the eye of the group pulling it. She emerged looking like a ghost version of herself. 'Welcome to Carnival', I thought, but they both later distinguished themselves with how well they threw themselves into the whole thing.

The town is full, and the bars are full, like almost no other time of year. Pretty much everybody comes home for this - we've already spoken to friends who've come back from Madrid and London. Others are arriving this weekend from Vigo, from Valladolid, from wherever they may be. The rooms in our house will all be full of visitors in need of a bed for the night.

It's difficult to overstate quite how important this is to people here, who take great pride in its genuine tradition (this is not something made up to coincide with Carnival to attract visitors, as happens in many enterprising councils), and they wouldn't miss it for anything. I've been told of a Vianese living in Valladolid years ago who, unable to get time off work to come home for Carnival, couldn't contain himself and got into 'legal difficulty' for flouring somebody in that city who obviously had no idea what this nutcase was doing.

Today will be a bit quieter, but tonight is obviously a very big night, not being a 'school night' for 99%. As late as we may turn it in this evening, Sunday is a big one. The folion parade and the Festa do Androlla are not to be missed. I'll tell you about that Festa in the next entry, as any cacophonous celebration of a large, bony sausage is deserving of its own entry. (And no, that wasn't a joke.)

And so it begins

I've just been served coffee by a mate of mine, a fairly strapping fellow, dressed in a long, black, sleeveless dress. (He's dressed like that - not me. I'm not that confident even at Carnival). He completed his ensemble with a gold hair clasp and some, to my ignorant eyes at least, expertly applied make-up.

Why this departure from his usually more conventional attire? Because today is compadres, of course, and it marks the first day when the flour throwing kicks in. It's a big day. Special occasion like that, man's got to dress up.

Last night, at midnight, the male Lardeiro was paraded from the top of the town down to the main square, accompanied by folion of course, and hoisted into place above the plaza. Almost immediately, any females present were liberally floured by lads who'd come suitably armed with kilo bags of the white stuff secreted about their person, and those ladies had no recourse to flour back. Today only, this coeliacs' nightmare battle of the sexes is entirely pitched in favour of the men and boys. Tomorrow, a normal free-for-all applies. Next Thursday the female version, the Lardeira, will take her place alongside her mate and the women and girls will have the day to themselves - any male venturing out on comadres accepts the risk of enflourment without comeback.

Brits would call a Lardeiro a Guy, or an effigy. They're the embodiment of Carnival, destined to go up in flames at midnight on Mardi Gras, signalling an end to the seasonal silliness. A sort of Olympic torch in reverse, if you will. Traditionally they were attired in clothes pinched from unsuspecting 'donors', though  I'm told that doesn't happen any more and the clothes are simply worn out, given freely. Their ultimate fate is a spectacular one - they're not just stuffed with rags and newspaper. Their bodies are essentially chicken-wire cages, into which fireworks, bangers and empty aerosol cans are stuffed. The Health and Safety people back in the UK would pass out at how they're made, how they're set aflame and how they're watched as they meet their fate.

You'll have to wait a week, old boy.
She'll be along in due course.

Crossing the square to get to the bar for my coffee, it already looks like it's been snowing. Chaos reigns as shrieking kids run about in fancy dress, boys covering girls' faces in flour, white-faced mums and clean-faced dads watching on in some cases. Today I was able to wear clean, new clothing and walk confidently across the plaza, knowing I wouldn't be targeted. From tomorrow that journey will have to be made at a run, wearing clothing I don't care if I can never don again.

All bets will be off until the Lardeiros burn, and it'll be safe to go out again, it all being over for another year. Apart from the funeral for the giant sardine, of course. More on that at the time.

Yes yes yes - but can it hold a tune?

We're all familiar with the agony of choice when it comes to purchasing our latest trowel head. Who hasn't, doing their routine shop at the ironmonger, stood by the rack wondering which size, which material, which brand? Will the cheapy one do? But the ground's really hard right now, maybe I should go with the professional one at three times the money? I'm sure I don't need to go into detail - you're all trowel-head aficionados here. In Viana it's rather different. When buying a trowel head here, you have to think about Carnival first, and everything else a distant second.

I've mentioned Carnival in passing on here a few times already, and intend to use this year's to write a few entries to go into more detail. For an excellent, rather more articulate outsider's view on Carnival, I recommend Flour on the Skin, a documentary made by a friend of ours a few years back, featuring my missus in front of the camera. Well the Carnival atmosphere in the village is growing already, and the most obvious sign of this is the sound of the folion, the booming beats of the locals' drums and aixadas, rhythms which have become extremely familiar to me.

There are various folion groups, though essentially anybody can play with any group they hook up with. (It's not, of course, quite that cut and dried, and I've learned that something so important to locals is not without its own politics.) They all have two basic ingredients in common, though - large wooden drums, made by locals and both skinned and shoulder-strapped with local animal hides, and aixadas; trowel heads. If you don't fancy lugging a bloody great drum around all evening, or don't have the several hundred Euros each one costs, or simply prefer to play the trowel head, it's the aixada you'll take out with you.

Here's one of ours:

Essential folion kit for the drumless. Note the carry rope made of old
shopping bags - nothing wasted here - and the marks made by hitting
the aixada with the hammer.

As you can imagine, these make a hell of a noise, bringing me back to my original point. It seems that in Viana, if you're my missus at least, you buy your aixada as much for its sound as for any other quality. Exclusively for its sound, in fact, since we have no other use for this item. So it was that last week I found myself at the ironmongers, somewhat incredulously listening to various trowel heads being struck in an effort to determine which had the sweeter note. The ironmonger Jorge, an important figure for the Carnival locally, being heavily involved in organising many of the events associated with it, thought there was absolutely nothing out of the ordinary about this.

I asked him only part-seriously if he sold more trowels for use as percussion than for use in the local farms, and he told me unhesitatingly that there was no doubt this was indeed the case.

I personally prefer to drum rather than go with the trowel. There's something truly visceral about your chest cavity vibrating to the beat of these things, and they can transport the drummers; many of the drum skins are mottled with the blood of the drummers' hands, so carried away do they get with beating them.  When hundreds turn up at once, as they do on the last night of Carnival, Mardi Gras, for the ceremonial burning of the Lardeiros (more on them in a later entry) it can feel like something out of a film. The combination of the huge drum beats, fire, fireworks exploding and flour drifting in the air at the same time is something that truly has to be experienced to be properly appreciated.

Friends who've come here for this, particularly from Britain, have described it in awed terms, leaving wide-eyed and exhausted at the end. Very few people here don't get absolutely animated and excited for it when it comes round. I'll try to give a small flavour of it over the next few entries.

Drums, please

I've probably mentioned the frenzy of flour throwing that happens around here in the build-up to Mardi Gras, and will do so again shortly. It's all part of the Latin world's celebration of Carnival which closes as Lent begins, and it's kind of started already.

A couple of weekends back, various groups were invited to Viana from all over Spain to participate in La Mascarada, a parade of fulions (the locals' various drum beats) and masked costumery of all kinds. It's kind of a cultural exchange, showcasing in another town what you all do yourselves during Carnival. The people who were good enough to come and visit all did so out of a love of Carnival and a desire to showcase their own celebrations, and for no financial rewards at all. It was a clear demonstration of how important these annual rituals are that they'd come so far for just a couple of days, some of them sleeping in the local sports hall, to do this.

I've now seen so many of these parades that none of what happens comes as even a vague surprise, but I do wonder how this must look to anybody who's never seen it. The images here, used with the kind permission of local photographer J Luis Ortiz, give a much better impression than anything I could write as to what goes on. As for the sound of the huge drums being beaten to the various Galician villages' own rhythms, you'll have to trust me that you can quite literally feel your entire chest cavity vibrating to the beat. More on those in another entry later - the drums are hugely important to the locals and deserving of their own entry and images.

The first sign that the parade has started (other than the approaching thunder of the drumming, of course) is the sound of bells. Then these guys come charging down the road, clearing the path for the coming parade. 

Boteiros - crowd control Carnival style. Photo: J Luis Ortiz.

The headwear these Boteiros sport are all, of course, hand-made, and can weigh anything up to 20kg. Many of them wear neck braces under the masks to help support the weight, but I've seen just how tiring it is running up and down and pole vaulting with their sticks with that kind of weight on their heads. I'd be surprised if they don't all finish each Carnival a couple of inches shorter.

Once the route's been cleared, the Boteiros shuttling back and forth keeping people back, down come the various groups. If they're from this part of Galicia the group will almost certainly include drummers beating the fulion, but those from elsewhere come in all kinds of finery, from Guadalajaran devils wearing real cows' horns, potato chunks cut into bizarre teeth shapes jutting from their mouths, to whatever this is;

"Where are you taking this... thing?" One for Star Wars fans there. Photo: J Luis Ortiz.

I couldn't see where these horsemen and women came from - each group carries a small sign naming their home town - but they stopped in the main square and challenged each other to a sort of saddled poetry-off. I'd love to tell you what they said but it was all in Gallego, which I still sadly lack as a language, and it was in any case all but impossible to hear them over the cacophony of cow bells, drums and inflated animal bladders being used for percussion.

"Speak up! I can't hear a thing..." Photo: J Luis Ortiz.

The arrival of Viana do Bolo's own 'Alternativo' fulion group signals the end of the parade, and it breaks up into various impromptu drinking and drumming sessions. Everybody who's been part of it heads up to the top of the town, where food and drink has been laid on for them in the sports hall. Later, after a couple of cold drinks in town overnight - it was a Saturday after all - they go and do the same thing again in another village a few miles away, before heading home for their own Carnival celebrations. As for Viana, we can all expect to have our faces covered in flour pretty much as soon as February starts - much more on that in a later entry.

Yeah those aren't balloons. The were once inside a cow and they make a lot of
noise when they're banged together. Photo: J Luis Ortiz.

(Incidentally, as regularly as I've attended this sort of thing now, I was still told by one of the local kids that I 'looked really English' after the parade simply because I was wearing a long, black coat and carrying an umbrella. It was bloody raining!)

See? I told you it was raining. I was hardly the only person carrying a brolly.
Photo: J Luis Ortiz.