Burial of the Sardine, Puerto de la Cruz, Tenerife 2020
The fiesta continued here in Puerto de la Cruz this week with the very bizarre Burial of the Sardine, which celebrates the end of the carnival.
It is basically a parody of a funeral procession where the object of grieving is a giant effigy of a sardine, this event always falls on Ash Wednesday and is a symbolic burial of the past and marks the beginning of lent leading up to Easter.
The funeral procession is a mockery of the church where the participants dress as mourners, nuns and priests.
The widows wail in their grief, most of the widows are men dressed as women to add to the mockery. It's all very entertaining and lots of fun.
The procession is led by drums and a band that alternates from playing the funeral march to very upbeat dance tunes
The initially procession winds its way thought the narrow streets of Puerto de la Cruz to Playa Martinánez, here all the mourners gather into an even larger procession which then proceeds slowly along the seafront promenade of Martiánez back through the towns streets to the harbor, where the sardine is put into the sea and burned in front of a large crown lined along the harbor.
This is all very strange to us non-Spaniards, but this ceremony is carried out across Spain, its roots set long in the past. It is said to be because Charles III ordered Sardines to be delivered to the fiesta of lent in Madrid, all of which spoiled because of the hot weather, it was ordered all the sardines be buried, and this quickly became a tradition.
