Carnival capers: The craziest night of the year (especially in Pego)
It's the silly season in Pego again...dust off your Donald Duck costume, book a cab for Sunday morning and prepare to dance until dawn
BAD LUCK for anyone who hopes to get to sleep in Pego tomorrow night – and if you think you've spotted Sponge Bob strolling through the Wild Boar Square chatting about politics with a blue giraffe and a red telephone box, it's not because the cleaner's slipped something in your cornflakes to get revenge for leaving them to clear up the cat-sick. In fact, if you step outside in your Mercadona clothes, it's you who'll be the weirdo.
Carnestoltes is the night when the British lose their global crown for being the oddest and most eccentric race on earth – if you can find it in the Chinese bazaar, and it's suitably bizarre, you'll see it out on the streets.
'Tomorrow night' is probably an inaccurate description: mainland Spain's second-most famous carnival (but Cádiz is far enough away not to be a serious contender) doesn't really kick off until about 23.00, and the sun will be high in the sky long before the music packs up.
Live bands and DJs on every corner, pop-up pavement bars selling overpriced rocket fuel, blokes in Frozen costume, both genders as snowmen and clowns, and lots of glitter and every hair colour except your boring blonde, brown or grey is what happens when Pego tries to rival the dance parades and splendour of Salvador de Bahia and Rio de Janeiro on the same night, but in a slightly lessbalmy climate.
This year, the (usually) sleepy Marina Alta market town has decided to get a bit closer to how they do it across the pond: instead of just being a drunken fancy-dress music festival and open-air nightclub, the evening starts off with circus acts, live music, theatre and dance shows around the streets from 19.30 to about 21.30, when an AfroBrazilian percussion band, or batucada, sets off from the C/ Sant Francesc Xavier and bashes its way rhythmically round the lanes until it reaches the market square.
The more impromptu circus acts take place after the witching hour when the bunch of Bart Simpsons, purple rabbits, post-boxes and Teletubbies, not to mention groups in Hawaiian hula-skirts and green-hair (and you should see the women) down enough psychedelic drain-cleaning fluid to wake them up for the long night ahead.
Believe it or not, though, there's rarely any trouble: these are happy drunks, not the type who'll pick a fight with you for supporting the wrong football team or voting the wrong party in the last local elections. You might have to fend off teams of cheerleaders trying to get you to join them for a drink and a dance, though. Or you might not bother to fend them off, and just tell yourself, if you can't beat them, and so on.
No doubt by now you've decided you're too old for all this lark – if you're over 21, at least. But you might want to tell that to the residents at the nursing home right next to the secondbiggest live music stage opposite the post office – those who are able nip out on their own feet to wiggle their hips, and those who can't are sometimes seen being wheeled out, chairdancing and smiling.
SO GOOD, EVERYONE'S DOING IT
Pego used to enjoy a Carnestoltes monopoly – turn back a decade or so, and it was the Iberdrola or the Telefónica of carnivals, but just like both of those (and RENFE from the end of this year), it's having to work a bit harder to drag people away from copycat acts sprouting up all over the region. Luckily, it's still the go-to party night before Lent turns everyone teetotal for six weeks – but if you live elsewhere and would rather save the taxi fare (don't even think about drinking and driving. Police patrol every exit from Pego, even that clever little shortcut you thought nobody in Spain but you had ever used) you could head to Jávea, Calpe or Benidorm – and if you have the stamina for two weekends on the trot, Gandia next Saturday.
Other towns, like Dénia and Oliva, hold costumed parades, with or without prizes, but mostly for the kids – Pego's children's parade is at 10.30 on Saturday morning, and Oliva's is usually a very low-key affair at about 17.30.
Some actually take place during school hours earlier in the week and turn it into a class project, which sure beats algebra.
Dig out your Batman mask and silver cape, make yourself some purple horns from loo-roll holders, and join in the fun – and actually, it can be more fun if you don't drink, as you can then snigger at everyone else making themselves look silly and, if you know them, blackmail them the next morning when their heads are too sore to do anything but agree to washing your car for you in exchange for your silence.