“É Carnaval, ninguém leva a mal!”. This popular saying, which roughly means “It’s Carnival, nobody will be offended!“, expresses the feeling of unrestrained freedom that takes over the country during the festive season of Carnival. Nowadays Carnival in Portugal is usually associated with street celebrations and parties, with costumes and bright colours, with parades where revellers in skimpy costumes with feathers and sequins dance to the sound of the exotic rhythms of Brazilian samba. Yet pockets of traditional Portuguese celebrations still survive across the country, where political satire rules the street parades, and where the influence of Brazil’s exuberant traditions are kept to a minimum.

Carnival takes place in the week before Lent – the penitential preparation for Easter, representing the forty days Jesus Christ fasted in the desert. Lent is associated with the idea of sacrifice and repentance, such as fasting or giving up on something, and has thus been traditionally preceded by a week of over-indulgence and celebration that culminates in Mardi Gras, or Fat Tuesday. However, the hypothesis of a pagan source is nowadays admitted by several scholars, as the Roman celebrations of Saturnalia and Bacchanalia may have been adapted to the Christian celebrations that followed.

The earliest record of the celebration of Carnival comes from medieval Italy, where the Carnival in Venice became the most sophisticated and well known of the region’s celebrations in the run-up to Lent. With its origins in the 13th century, the celebrations soon became associated with the use of masks, which enabled revellers to hide their identity while indulging in unrestricted behaviour. The use of these distinctive and refined Venetian masks is still a reference today, distinguishing it from other Carnival celebrations around the world.

As for Portugal, celebrations have been heavily influenced by the Brazilian Carnival over the last few decades – and more specifically by the samba parades held in Rio de Janeiro. The country has, however, a long tradition in celebrating the festive season that dates back to pagan times. In fact, most of Portugal’s celebrations still reflect this influence to some degree, as the foliões – as revellers are known in Portugal – dress up in their costumes and pour into the streets.

The city of Torres Vedras is commonly viewed as having the most ‘traditional of all Carnivals’ in Portugal. Apart from its parade floats (known in Portugal as carros alegóricos - allegorical cars), which commonly depict satirical scenes of a political and social nature, the torriense Carnival is known for its matrafonas - men masqueraded as women -, and its cabeçudos – figures parading with giant-sized heads made from paper pulp -, and is very popular. You can expect thousands of revellers getting well into the spirit of things and joining the celebrations, wearing all sorts of costumes and disguises. This Carnival even has a Real Confraria, a confraternity created specifically to organise the Carnival of Torres Vedras and promote several initiatives for the advancement of Carnival culture.

Leaving Torres Vedras behind, there are other curious Carnival traditions in the country which are worthy of interest. One of these is the ancient tradition of the Caretos, celebrated in the small village of Podence, near Bragança, in the northern region of Trás-os-Montes. Commonly held as having its roots in Celtic times, with links to agrarian fertility cults, the tradition is based on the figures of the caretos – young men who parade through the village wearing masks and dressed in striped, multilayered woollen suits made of different-coloured fringes in red, white and green. They wear belts with rattles around their waists and carry a stick or a cudgel which they brandish while running amok through the village, scaring the other villagers while playfully targeting the young maidens.

Another peculiar tradition can be seen in the northern city of Ovar, where Carnival celebrations in the 1950s developed into what became known as the “Carnaval sujo” (dirty Carnival). This was a feast of excess, which involved an all-out battle between the town’s revellers who spent one hour (kept by the church bells and the fire station klaxon) literally bombing each other from cars and trucks with dirt, liquids, powders – from flour to pigments and coal – and all sorts of other stuff. The result was a big mess that littered the centre of town and caused a great number of injuries. The excessive nature of the celebration eventually led to its suppression, and the local Carnival then took a turn towards a more organised event featuring parades and floats and people in costumes during Domingo Gordo (literally Fat Sunday - Shrove Sunday) and Terça-feira Gorda (Fat Tuesday - Shrove Tuesday or Mardi Gras). In more recent years the Ovar Carnival has been permeated by Brazilian influences, with samba parades, but it still features its ”Noite Mágica” (or Magic Night), on Monday evening, where people crowd the streets in their disguises and join a playful parade.

Carnival in the island of Madeira is well known for its marches and sumptuous allegoric parades. The streets of Funchal are taken over by thousands of revellers joining the themed parade on Saturday, accompanied by lavishly decorated floats. Nowadays it has also been heavily influenced by Brazilian-style Carnival, and samba groups and scantily clad girls take over the streets of the city. The idiosyncratic leader of the region, Alberto João Jardim, is a staunch supporter and is known to take part in the celebrations, often seen dancing in the parades, sporting a different costume each year according to the theme. Apart from the main parade, the island is also known for its “Cortejo trapalhão” (Slapstick Parade), an informal affair which sees thousands of people take to the streets and celebrate in their own costumes and doing their own thing on Mardi Gras.

There are other Carnival celebrations in Portugal which are also prominent cultural events whose origins go back a few centuries. The Carnival of Estarreja dates back to the 19th century, when a “Battle of Flowers” first took place – a merry procession comprising several richly decorated parade floats that were pulled through the town centre, colouring the streets. In the Algarve, the Carnival in Loulé is a hugely popular event, and like Ovar, the city saw its old “dirty Carnival” replaced by a more civilised affair in 1906, when the use of decorated parade floats and the throwing of confetti and paper streamers became the norm, and which can still be seen today.

(Photography: Cláudio Franco / claudiofranco.net; Flickr/Jamie Neely)