The “Burial of the Sardine” (Spanish: Entierro de la Sardina) is a Spanish ceremony celebrating the end of the carnival and other festivities. This is a typical ceremony of the dates that announces the end of the Carnival with parades of a more funeral style, but with a waste of laughter, jokes, nice jokes, and a thousand other things.
Although it is a combination that may sound a bit strange, it turns out to be the perfect mix to have a great time.
The parades during the Burial of the Sardine are a parody of a funeral procession that is traditionally celebrated on Ash Wednesday, ending the journey with the sardine burning as a representative figure of the Carnival. The carnival parties are then dismissed with this event and the beginning of Holy Week begins.
The Burial of the Sardine is also a symbolic way of burying the past along with errors, reborn clean, with more strength and experience.
The “Burials” generally consist of a carnival parade that parodies a funeral procession and culminates with the burning of a symbolic figure, usually a representation of a sardine.
The “Burial of the Sardine” is celebrated on Ash Wednesday and is a symbolical burial of the past to allow society to be reborn, transformed, and with new vigour.
Many Spanish festivals end with ceremonies in which a symbol representing the excesses of the festival is burned or destroyed — although some have been lost, others have been revived.
Similar celebrations include the “Fiesta del Judas”, the “Judas Party” (la quema del haragán), and the “Burning of the Raspajo” (la quema del raspajo).
The burning of an effigy represents regeneration and liberation — the passage of the symbol through the fire represents a purging of the vices and restoration of the order temporarily subverted during the festival; in ceremonies of symbolical burial, the theme is one of reflection.
After a month full of costumes, parties, lights, glitter, music and good atmosphere, comes the day of the Burial of the Sardine, in Spanish named “El Entierro de La Sardina”.
It signifies the end of the carnival frivolities (except they go on to the following weekend) and the beginning of Lent. Prepare yourself for a raucous, blasphemous night of it.
Events begin at around 10 pm when the parody funeral cortège with thousands of people dressed as widows and mourners escorted by the ‘respectable’ members of the church, leaves from the Calle Juan Pablo II, continues past the Plaza Weyler and proceeds along with Méndez Núñez, El Pilar, Villalba Hervás and La Marina, to end up in the Plaza de España with the cremation of the sardine in the Avenida Francisco La Roche (Anaga).
