Wednesday, February 06, 2008

Ash Wednesday: Burial of the Sardine

Can we imagine a family night out solely about witnessing displays of blasphemy and hardcore porn?

Anything you heard about Carnaval in Tenerife, so far, that you thought was maybe surreal, a bit OTT, downright rude, utterly crazy ... will be rendered tame today, Ash Wednesday.

Lent ("Christian Ramadan") begins and, tonight there's a "funeral" taking place, the Entierro de la Sardina to lament the death of the fiestas. The significance of the sardine is that it represents the return from the anarchy and craziness of carnaval, back to the everyday order.

Apart from the final weekend to come, referred to as the piñata, carnaval is beginning to end, officially, in Santa Cruz for another year.

Although the event is called a burial (entierro means putting in the earth, literally), it would be more properly called a cremation, but that seems like an unnecessary and pedantic distinction, given the circumstances.

The video above, of the Entierro de la Sardina in 2007, shows the final moments, in the Calle La Noria, when the sardine effigy

was burnt

last year - that is after the funeral procession (and mucho alcohol had been consumed). Also symbolically, Guy Fawkes stylee, an effigy of the lawyer who represented the Neighbours' Association in their complaint about the noise was cremated.

(OK, so maybe 155 dB - louder than a jet engine roaring 100 feet from your ears - was a bit much for midnight, but their protests fell on deaf ears. :)

Nobody was going to be allowed to do away with more than 200 years of the "institution" of carnaval in the streets of Tenerife's capital.

If you go to the page about the Entierro de la Sardina at the carnaval's official site, click on the image there, because it will open up a whole gallery of excellent images of the sardine, the procession, plus all the accompanying widows and clergy.

Still, the best description of this whole surreal and blasphemous closing parade is Julie Burchill's article, Carnaval Queen.

A couple of widows at Santa Cruz' Burial of the Sardine in 2007.
Photo: kasia kazmierskaShe asks, "Can we imagine a family night out solely about witnessing displays of blasphemy and hardcore porn?"

The sardine's "widows", most are blokes in drag

, dressed tartilly (they're going on the game) in black

, wailing inconsolably

at their loss. Others dress as popes, priests, pregnant nuns, "many of them carrying huge dildos with which they blessed the crowd", says Burchill.

She continues, "On the night the sardine is laid to rest, you realise how irretrievably the Catholic church's backing of Fascism during the second world war has damaged its reputation in its heartland. I knew that the Catholic countries of southern Europe now boast the lowest birth-rates in the world, but I never realised how complete their contempt for their religion is until I saw the burial."

La Laguna Ahora published an article today which explains that during the "Fiestas de Invierno" (Winter Festival), the name that carnaval had to go under during Franco's dictatorship, they used to have to mess with the calendar to make sure that the sardine - which, of course, was "prohibited" anyway - didn't coincide with Ash Wednesday. Once liberties were regained, the event was restored with enthusiasm. They have wonderful old sepia photos of the epoch.

The official site lists the event as running from 9 p.m. to 11 p.m., starting from the Plaza de la Paz and ending in the Plaza de Europa. As with everything else, there will be fireworks to finish, just before the all-night revelries start.

More images of the Entierro de la Sardina at Carnaval 2007

Labels: Carnaval 2008