Galician Entroido

Antroido/Entroido/ Carnival is a galician tradition that takes place during the month of February. It’s origins are linked to the pagan tradition that commemorated the end of the winter and the arrival of the Spring. Nowadays, The Carnival is one of the best loved festivals in Galicia for people of all ages.

With small variations, celebrations usually last for 20 days, starting the beginning of February and coming to an end on Ash Wednesday. During Carnival, it is allowed to have a bit of reverent fun, mock authority and indulge before Lent.

Mostly rural, the Entroido is widely celebrated in villages, towns and cities across Galicia. Some of the oldest and most unique and spectacular Carnival festivals take place in the province of Ourense, in the towns of Xinzo de Limia, Verín and Laza.

It is important to stress the great diversity of the Galician Carnival: Each of the towns has its own traditional characters and traditions, such as the epic flour and ant-throwing battle in Laza; as well as its outlandish hand-painted masks and outfits complete with noisy cow bells.

As it couldn’t be otherwise, Galician Carnival goes hand in hand with food. The most typical dishes of this time of the year are the Cocidoo Galego (pork-based stew), Androllas and the Orellas de frade (Monk’s ears, which is a delicious sweet treat)

O Entroido brings to the cold February month a great festive spirit, filling the streets of Galicia with colour, music and laughter.

In Galicia, and specially in the rural areas, o Entroido is not a celebration; it’s THE CELEBRATION. This festival is prepared with lots of care and love, and it’s awaited with great expectation throughout the year. Galicia has some of the most singular and ancestral manifestations of this celebration. The Carnival feeling and rituals are impregnated with humor. You can also appreciate this humor in the aesthetics, the costumes, the masks and also in the theatrical representations common in Ourense during this time of the year: Coplas, parodies, foliadas, testaments (...) they are all stories about the life in small galician towns that reflect the feelings of their people, from whom the stories are inspired, alongside their ret

ranca -humor- and poetic soul.

Carlos Hervella, Galician Photojournalist, O Sil.

A Casa da Cultura Galega en Copenhague brings a bit of this tradition to Denmark. The Galician Carnival Costumes's Photo Exhibition opens today in VerdensKulturCentret, Copenhagen. (13th-28th February 2017)