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February is the month for Carnivals in Spain and in a few countries of Latin America. The Spaniards, who love dressing up and look for reasons to have a good party, celebrate their famous February carnivals in Tenerife,  and Cádiz, while other cities and towns celebrate as well but with traditional, unique twists of their own. The festive feeling of carnivals that take over the Spanish territory ends on the Tuesday before Miércoles de Ceniza (Ash Wednesday) which is the last day before the start of the Catholic 40-day fasting and abstinence season known as Cuaresma (Lent).

In Madrid, an unusual ceremony called El Entierro de la Sardina (literally, the burial of the sardine) takes place. A large number of people get together to observe a centuries old annual Spanish tradition of burying a dead fish. This popular manifestation was first captured for posterity and made famous by Spanish painter Francisco de Goya in an oil painting of the same name, “El Entierro de la Sardina,” dated between 1812 and 1819.

The satirical ceremony simulates a burial procession of a sardine (real or fake), which gets solemnly paraded around the city streets in a real or cardboard coffin. Men and women dress up in black period costume clothes, with men sometimes daring to dress up as weeping widows. Women do cover their heads with the traditional black Spanish lace veil. The sardine is the symbol of the carnival (a “liberating period”), while its death and burial represent the end of carnival season and the beginning of the religious fasting period. People “mourn” their feelings of sadness over the ending of the festive season and how it implies the beginning of staunch religious observance.

The procession is headed by someone pretending to be a public prosecutor, and whose role consists of clearing the streets ahead of the procession to allow the passing of the carnival carriage. He is followed by a fake priest, the priest’s young assistant and the people in charge of driving the funeral carriage. The wooden carriage is adorned with palms, flowers and other offerings with the sardine resting in its interior, as if it were its hearse. The widows follow, confessing their “sins” to the false priest and lamenting the death of the sardine with fake screams and weeping. Someone dressed up as the Devil tries to prevent the passage of the sardine by trying to abduct it, but a supposed group of policemen scare the devil away and maintain order among the procession attendees. When the sardine’s carriage reaches its destination, the people’s collective euphoria intensifies.

There are 2 different stories as to the origin of this tradition, yet no one seems to know for sure when one is true. The first story dates back to the XVII century, when Charles III, King of Spain, who wanted to celebrate the end of the festival with the commoners, ordered sardines and wine to be served at the countryside picnic. The weather that day was hot, very typical at the time of year, and the sardines began to smell foul due to the heat. The people wanted to get rid of the bad smell and realized the only way to achieve that was to bury them. The king consented to this. The people wept at the thought of no longer getting free food and having to begin the observant period of abstinence.

The other story goes that in past years when Cuaresma was dutifully observed by all, a breed of pig called “sardine” was buried on the first day of this Saintly period, in representation of the meat they would have to forfeit eating during the religious observation period. This pig’s breed name sardine became popular.

What follows next depends on the city celebrating the burial. Cities that are not near water do not bury the sardine, they burn it in a symbolic cremation, similar to Valencia’s cremá de las Fallas. In cities nearer the sea or rivers, the sardine is buried or it may also be burned. Its “ashes” are scattered into the sea, or it is taken out to the open ocean on a boat symbolizing the sardine’s return “home” and the close of the carnival festivities.

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