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.

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.