Carnival in Oviedo

     Because the main Carnival celebrations in Asturias are held in Gijon and Aviles, my adopted city of Oviedo held its main Mardi Gras celebrations yesterday, Sat. 17 Feb.--in spite of the fact that Lent started last Wednesday.

    It is hard to capture the wonderful bizarreness of Oviedo's Antroxu (which is the local, Celtic-sounding term for Carnival).  Here are a few snapshots.

    This year Oviedo's Antroxu celebrations were, for the first time, directly organized by the local government (previously the celebration was run by the now disbanded La Sociedad Ovetense de Festejos), and, while there had been some grumbles about the changes the city council was making, in the end the entire Antroxu was hailed as a great success.  Some 2,500 costumed people participated in yesterday's parade through the city, which included both what one might expect from a Mardi Gras celebration as well as other traditional elements that clearly have their origins in the pagan world.  Most notable of the latter were the Sidros (fur-clad red-faced creatures with tall sticks they use to spring up in the air) who led off the parade, and the solemn procession of the Entierro de la Sardina (the "Burial of the Sardine"--a huge facsimile of a scape-goat fish that is ultimately buried in a vat of cider) that ended the parade.

A Sidros

Entierro de la Sardina

     And there were plenty of other oddly costumed figures:  

     And, this being Asturias, of course there were bagpipes:  

     One of my favorite groups was a club from Luarca that had a Great Gatsby-inspired Roaring Twenties dance group: 

  For more images of the parade, see this link from today's El Comercio:  

  One of the innovations of the 2018 Oviedo Antroxu was the group Mazcaritos d'Uviéu, which reconstructed traditional Antroxu costumes and satirical songs, which they performed with a great deal of interaction with bystanders.  Here are a few images of this group performing in the days before Mardi Gras in the plaza of the Ayuntamiento, just a block from where I live:

     And, finally, what can I say about the celebrations that followed?  After the judging of the costumes, which was held on a stage in the main Cathedral square (see below), costumed partiers danced and drank well into the night.  

  As it turns out, our apartment is right above one of the main party streets of Oviedo.  Revelers continued until 8am in the morning, leaving behind a huge pile of trash and empty bottles that our noble city street cleaners had all removed by 10 am!