My EVS in Andalusia 14

Helau! Alaaf! With a comparable shouting does the German Carnival start in cities like Düsseldorf, Köln or Mainz. I have never participated in such big events, only seen them on TV. The last time I dressed up for a party was as a wee lassie for the celebration of our local gymnastics club.

Therefore, it has been even more exciting to be part of the traditional carnival here in Purchena.

A custom we certainly do not have in Germany is “el entierro de la sardina” (“the burial of the sardine“). This is not related to the fish, at least not originally. Meant is the burial or in our case burning (symbolically the destruction and banishment) of the winter and of all evil things.

So where does the sardine come from? Most likely from the misspelling of a word with another meaning. A second theory is the story about a king who during carnival celebration ordered loads of sardines for his feast the following day. But as they got all damaged overnight and in order to get rid of the pungent smell, the king gave the order to bury them all for once.

However the truth, it brought us the honour of fabricating three straw dolls that were to be burned after the big parade. The two Turkish volunteers, Mine and Sevket, and Renata and I were sent out to look for something like thick bamboo sticks and got equipped with straw and old cloths. Filling the cloths with straw, forming bodies and sewing them around the sticks, we created three human dolls: A man in pyjamas and a dressing gown to whom I gave the face of Sevket (by drawing his face on white sheets), a Russian woman with giant boobs, at least size F, and a German tourist in shorts and with a towel on his shoulder, with blond hair and cheeks, nose and ears burned by the sun. All three were clearly overweight and surely suffering from certain pains.

I had planned to go as a Hollywood actress from the 50ies or 60ies with my lovely petty coat dress and a nice hairstyle. But the weather was not cooperating. With 5 °C and having had a cold and strong coughing for quite a while, I decided it not to be wise to go out with a dress. Nevertheless, a day before carnival, Renata curled my hair pinning the curls up for a while to make them stay longer. This intermediate stage made me look like the French queen Marie Antoinette and I liked it so much that I asked her to spare the last step and keep it like that the following day.

The parade on Saturday started at 17.00h. Renata was dressed as Pocahontas with a costume made by her mum. Mine turned herself into an enchanting ladybird and Sevket turned out to be a perfect Jesus. We admired the variety and creativity of costumes. They were all together in groups of five to ten people having costumes with similar topics.

After two rounds through the village, everybody gathered together on the field to see the burning of the straw dolls. They were hanging on a long string, together with oversized newspaper sardines filled with fireworks. With Juan, a Spanish friend we watched the poor dolls explode. It reminded me a lot of the TV series “Game of Thrones”, which I have been watching in Spanish recently, only that our dolls do not have any feelings.

Juan, by the way, was wearing a rain coat and a frying pan saying “I love Migas”. This is very Andalusian. “Migas” (=crumbs) is the name of an Andalusian dish, eaten on rainy days. It is consists of crumbs made of olive oil, salt and flour mixed with meat, fish, vegetables etc. I can say I am not the biggest fan of it. But we probably did not prepare it the right way.

In the evening, we went to see music and dancing performances, including many jokes difficult for us to understand. After that, there was the option to have tapas and to dance. Sevket, Mine and I went away comparably early. Our dancing queen Renata stayed there with Juan and Steve (our English friend) until half past 5 in the morning, dancing 8 hours and a half without interruption!