Home »

[Odler]

At midnight, the humongous, bright, multicolor sardine was finally

left alone on its throne. That was at the end of the brief ceremony

led by a large and active clerical corps made of priests and

monsignors look-alike.

A few minutes later, in front of the large crowd gathered near Plaza

de Espana, on the emptiness of a building lot, the sardine went into

a fiery firework, and ended as a colossal fireball. The sardine was

dead, executed.

The crowd roared. The widows whined and screamed louder. Mr. Sardine

was not buried, it was incinerated.

The funeral mass was celebrated earlier in the evening. The procession followed. It was made of hundreds of widows (mostly men in drag) dressed with fancy black outfit, whaling, wailing, crying, wondering what will happen to them now, what will happen to their fatherless children.

That was an interestingly unique parade with drums and music. The spectacle was heartbreaking and... hilarious.

It is my recollection that, way buried in the past, there used to be

a similar event associated with the carnaval of Port-au-Prince, in

which Mr. Carnaval was torched, or something to that effect.

When I asked around Tenerife about the origin of this sardine

tradition, I was told the story of a fisherman who used to have many,

many women, as it was of common occurrence among fishermen of the

Canarias.

One day, a husband killed the philanderer, the fisher of sardines.

And, this folkloric tale got absorbed into the reality of carnaval.

Long ago, the demise of the sardine used to mean the end of

carnival. In today´s Tenerife, there are still four more nights of

partying to go through, not including tonight...

(The Traveller, on Tuesday, February 14, 2002)