Entrudo de Góis
Nuno Marques
The Traditional Carnival of the Schist Villages of Góis takes place every year on Sunday before Carnival. The revellers, all dressed up in old clothes and cork masks, with their pockets filled with “bugalhos” to throw at people and making noise with cowbells and rattles, run across the villages playing tricks on the population and reading jokes about the villagers. The masks are one of the most iconic image of this Carnival, with their toothless diabolic grimaces made from the harvesting of cork from the Cork Oak or from the reuse of old bees’ tenements, adorned with whiskers and eyebrows made out of sheep’s wool and sometimes with horns of goat or lamb. Almost all of theses masks are made by a single craftsman, José Cerdeira, born in 1933. A visit to his workshop reveals a fantastic universe filled with miniatures of traditional rural devices, animals, trees, flowers, giant rosaries, crazy dolls and, of course, the cork masks that he began to make 20 years ago.
Folia de São João
Nuno Marques
June is the month of the Popular Saints in Portugal with festivities all over the country. In Porto you can find a party every night. People gather to eat, drink and have fun in the streets decorated with bows, balloons and colourful flags. The city’s main party is in the night of 23 to 24, when São João is celebrated. Colours, lights and odours embrace the joyful crowds through the tight and irregular streets of the oldest neighbourhoods. A secular celebration full of traditions, such as the launching of colourful hot air balloons – one of the most beautiful scenes of these festivities –, hitting people on the head with leeks or plastic hammers, the basil vases and the grilled sardines on the street, which fill the air with very particular odours and fumes.