By K.P. our resident food critic Paella is one of Spain’s national joys (as you probably know) and is hands down the one dish you HAVE to wrap your mouth…
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Carnival In Spain
Stokepedia

Have you noticed all the feather boas around at the moment? All the face painting and face masks and fancy dress and dancing parades? It’s because it’s currently carnival! That week-long party that serves as one finally hurrah before we all give up on the fun stuff (booze, casual sex, drugs) for 40 days and 40 nights before Easter arrives, with all its gruesome torture reenactments and chocolate-pooping rabbits (strange festival fellows, methinks).
Devout Catholics aside, not many people abstain in Spain during Lent, nor do they abstain on the plain. But did you think we’d give up on the party beforehand? Not on your chorizo lovin’ life! Not in hard-partying Spain, where religious occasions are little more than an excuse to do something dangerous and/or ridiculous (see our travel documentary, 50 Fiestas, for some examples of mad Spanish parties pretending to be religious affairs). Carnival in Spain is a time when most villages, towns and cities have something wild going on. Here’s a small selection of the best.
Carnival in Sitges
This party makes the cut because of the number of revellers who attend, the party’s proximity to Barcelona, and because it’s the carnival Stoke visits every year. Big, bright costumes, dancing parades, colour and music, unbridled hedonism, fashionable masks covering your identity, plenty of bars and partying in the streets, babes and hot guys, and the level of partying that can only be found in one of Europe’s gay capitals. Sitges Carnival is a non-judgemental, gender fluid, no-holds-barred knees up that sees straight and gay men and women and grandparents and children, locals and tourists and expats and everybody partying together like there’s no tomorrow. The biggest night is Fat Tuesday, and yes, you’d better reserve your space now.
Laza
In Laza, Gaicia, they celebrate carnival by dressing up like absolute weirdos and throwing fire ants at each other, oh and before they throw the ants they make sure they make them nice and aggressive by spraying them with vinegar and shaking them around in a big sack. It’s obviously the weirdest way to celebrate Carnival in Spain, if not in the world.
Tenerife
The Canary Islands are geographically Africa, but a part of Spain, and due to their southern aspect enjoy temperate weather year-round. It’s never too hot, it’s never too cold, it’s always just right in the Canaries. The Canarians, as we assume the people from the Canaries like to be called, absolutely love their island during Carnival. It’s their best party of the year, a week or more of incognito raging, a fancy dress party of epic proportions. There isn’t anything overly weird about this carnival, just that it goes for longer than it should and is more fun than anyone could possibly have.
Las Palmas
Also in the Canary Islands, this Carnival features a pitched white-powder battle that may or may not be a nod to the island’s connection to South America and various import-export businessmen who made their fortune selling white powder. Whatever the party’s origins, it sure looks like a chalky good time.
Murcia
Down in the south of Spain, they mark the end of the Carnival with the symbolic burying of the sardine. This event is a mock funeral performed for a giant sardine. Obviously.
If you can’t make it to any of the weirder and wilder Spanish Carnivals, make sure you join us in Sitges and tune into 50 Fiestas to see what happens when fire ants are unleashed on a population.