Castilla la mancha The carnival of Cuenca recovers all its splendor this year: dates, news and details
The city of Cuenca will recover the traditional Carnival parade this 2022, after last year's suspension due to the pandemic, and the Burial of the Sardine with an anti-COVID protocol at the same time that they will bring news regarding The tours.
As explained by the president of the Friends of Cuenca Carnival association, Manuel Lozano, in statements to Europa Press, the 2022 Cuenca Carnival will be held from February 19 to March 2, a total of 12 days of carnival parties that will bring novelties to the city. All scheduled events are being worked on jointly between the association and the Department of Celebrations of the City of Cuenca.
First of all, that first weekend of festivities, the troupe Los Indomables directed by David Carapapa, a traditional of the Carnival of Cádiz, will go up on the tables of the Teatro Auditorio de Cuenca that, once the new troupe opens in the capital from Cádiz on February 18, they will go on a national tour stopping in Cuenca two days later.
This afternoon of the Cádiz Carnival in Cuenca will start at 6:00 p.m., with a duration of just over an hour and a half, and tickets will cost 12 euros for the general public and 10 euros for their reduced price.
A comparsa that, in the words of Lozano, "is going to be a very nice act and that is going to mark the history of the Carnival of Cuenca because we believe that it is going to attract a lot of people, the prices are going to be popular, and it will be something very interesting."
As of the 20th, there are already programmed a series of activities and workshops with the self-help associations and the disability centers of the city, as well as workshops with children, where they will try to hold a mask contest so that the Participants can develop it and then people have to vote for the most beautiful or most creative face.
Parade
Then there will be some activity with the elderly with some musical activity and the big act of the Cuenca Carnival will arrive on Saturday, February 26 with the parade of masks and costumes. The first novelty will be the route, which completely changes the ones that have existed previously in the city.
Like the last Three Kings procession, the Carnival parade will start from the roundabout of the old Brico King and will go through the streets of Hermanos Becerril, Fermín Caballero, Cervantes, José Cobo and Carretería to conclude the carnival parade in the Plaza de Spain.
Although at first it was put on the table to have a group parade and a catwalk for couples and individuals on Sunday the 27th, the association understood that this "would be a lot of work for the health situation in which we find ourselves". In the end, it has remained in a single parade that will be held on the 26th, which has the novelty that everyone who participates, both groups, couples and individuals, will have to sign up in advance, "they will not be able to wear their disguise and go to the parade".
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For this reason, "whoever wants to compete in the parade must previously fill out an application as a participant, they will be given a number and then they will be located in a position in the parade to do so." When the parade arrives at the Plaza de España, there will also be delimited areas with the number assigned to each participant to avoid crowds and avoid the risk of contagion by COVID.
This parade, also as a novelty, will have a professional jury, which will not include politicians or staff of the Friends of the Cuenca Carnival Association with the aim of obtaining an impartial ruling.
Once the parade ends, the prizes will be awarded, in a place yet to be defined. What is closed are the economic amounts that each group will receive, which this year "have increased considerably." In this way, the first prize will be 700 euros, the second prize 500 euros, the third prize 300 euros and, finally, a fourth prize of 200 euros.
Burial of the Sardine
The closing of the Cuenca Carnival will be done by recovering the traditional Burial of the Sardine, which will have a new route this year. In this way, it will take place on Ash Wednesday, March 2, and it is expected that a procession with a sardine failure will leave the Fuente del Oro neighborhood that will parade towards the steel forest, where it will set fire and burn. will carry out a prize-giving by raffle.
Although holding a sardine contest had been considered, "taking into account the health situation, it has been considered more appropriate for a small sardine-shaped falla to appear and for people who want to say goodbye to the sardine to put on their costume to accompany the parade on this short tour", pointed out the president of the association.
Safe Carnival
Although this is the general idea that both the association and the Department of Celebrations are considering, Lozano has emphasized that this year there will be Carnival in Cuenca and, in the event that there were not for sanitary reasons, "it would be delayed and it would be done perhaps in May or June".
"We always have to work safely, for example, in the case of groups, making a video on how to make a costume and pass it on to the rest of the group to avoid many people gathering in the same closed space", he highlighted .
For this reason, "the vast majority of the activities will be outdoors, which reduces the risk, and in no case is there an activity that will entail removing the mask," Lozano has made clear.
"We could have considered the traditional chocolate or eating sardines on the day of the burial, but all this is not going to be done because it would mean removing our mask and that would already pose a risk of contagion, so we are working on a safe Carnival", has underlined.
Thus, to reduce these possibilities of contagion, "people will have to parade with masks, they will not be able to leave even to eat or drink during the tour, and all this will go on bases that throughout this week It will be elaborated and it is hoped that it will be public as soon as possible".
