Carnaval 2024
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Carnaval fills the city with color again with a program featuring omelette competitions, concerts, parades, mask workshops and more. Carnaval is one of the most popular festivals of the year. In Barcelona, it's the festival that gets the most people involved, so for one week every year, the city is transformed with afternoon snacks of botifarra d'ou (egg sausage), masked dances, parades and sardine funerals.
And there is no Carnaval without its king, and King Carnestoltes will reach the city center punctually on February 8, Fat Thursday, to proclaim his reign of revelry.
The city's festival has changed dramatically since the first documented reference to the Carnaval, a 1333 regulation from the Consell de Cent government prohibiting any throwing of oranges and regulating the use of masks. Nowadays, the desire to have a good time and make merry is just as strong as it was then. Twenty-first century Barcelona Carnaval is all about taking part, and also implies a degree of transgression, a spontaneous exercising of individual and collective freedom.
Barcelona's Carnaval traditions range from its unique gastronomy, with egg and pork sausages, pork crackling cakes and omelettes, to a collection of sayings rich in popular expressions where Carnaval is the protagonist. It is also a festivity shared around the world, which each culture adapts in its own way through a multitude of artistic expressions and typically popular traits.
For more events check our online events calendar.