When we see and hear the corrosive, fun and sometimes cruel chirigotas of Cádiz or the paraphernalia that accompanies the extravagant queens of the Tenerife carnival, the last thing that can occur to us is that someone would want to ban them. Or maybe not so much, if we remember that politically correct language or the fear that someone will feel offended have restricted, in recent years, even the jokes or anecdotes that we previously shared in meetings and in our own families’ WhatsApp groups. , and that we considered nothing more than small provocations or gestures of complicity.
Carnivals have served, also in their contemporary version, as a relief for the population. A relief that was expressed with the parade of a kind of floats that carried men and women dressed in grotesque ways through the avenues and surrounded by thunderous and, at times, annoying music, a certain lascivious transgression and songs full of satire and parodies in the who ridiculed the authorities, of course, but without ever stopping laughing at us… and at themselves.
Some of these festivals began to attract the interest of national and, sometimes, foreign tourism with the prosperity and sharp increase in travel, especially in the late 1920s. And they were prohibited during the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera, except in cases like those of Cádiz and Tenerife, where the local tradition was so widespread that the celebrations were “only” restricted with censorship and their names were changed. If you don’t call it carnival, it’s not carnival.
Certainly, there was always tension, also in the Second Republic, between freedom of expression and the desire of the troupes to scandalize in their criticism of politicians and the clergy, on the one hand, and, on the other, the authorities. As the historian Santiago Moreno recalls in a recent book, those who sang, for example, couplets in the streets and theater of Cádiz had to register in an official registry. In addition, prior censorship of certain messages was applied under the Defense or Public Order laws. In any case, the expert points out, freedom was much greater in that period than with the Primo dictatorship, the Civil War or the Franco regime.
Precisely, on February 3, 1937, the Franco side imposed a circular order prohibiting the celebration of all carnivals in Spain. The order justified the measure not only because of the exceptional situation of the country, but because, according to it, in the rear the “joys” could not be given free rein, while the soldiers who defended them suffered at the front.
In reality, they were just excuses. And this was seen when the Ministry of the Interior refused in 1940 to reverse the ban and, a year later, implied that it should be applied indefinitely.
Despite this prohibition until further notice, in the immediate post-war period, society dances were held in both Cádiz and Tenerife during carnival time, where makeup and costumes were used. It is true that they generally occurred in closed venues, that the promoters could not claim them, in any case, as carnival parties and that the guests had to be perfectly identifiable, so masks and masks had to be avoided. In these circumstances, the authorities could turn a blind eye or issue permits, as when the captain general of the Canary Islands guaranteed the security of a carnival party at the La Guancha casino.
The fact that they were society dances in circles, casinos and societies suggests that, in Cádiz and Tenerife, the carnivals were socially widespread enough for the bourgeoisie to also participate, something that hardly happened in the rest of Spain before the war. . Everything seems to indicate that, in the years of hunger, it was the bourgeoisie who kept alive, although very diluted, a tradition that had always been the protagonist of the popular classes. A lack of prominence that is not only seen in the discretion of the parties, but also in the absence of messages against politicians or the clergy.
The very gradual lifting of the entire ban that imposed private parties instead of public ones had to do with an interesting set of coincidences. To begin with, in Cádiz, in 1947, there was an accidental explosion of a Navy mine depot located in the San Severiano neighborhood, with thousands of victims, including deaths and injuries. And that created considerable unrest among the population.
Later, the decision to reverse the ban fell to a civil governor (who would later become general director with the Minister of Education Joaquín Ruiz-Giménez), who believed in 1948 that a version of the carnivals could be authorized, as long as they were celebrated on the last Sunday in August, that they were called “Choir Festivals” and that the parades were carried out exclusively by choirs and murgas that submitted their songs and practices to prior censorship. Later, the Choir Festivals, started in 1949, became “Typical Folklore Festivals” and, finally, “Typical Gaditan Festivals”.
These carnival substitutes began to contribute notable income to municipal coffers thanks, above all, to tourism. On the other hand, censorship remained very vigilant, and the celebrations, although they included all social strata, had the clear aroma of a bourgeoisie close to the regime.
More specifically, in the mid-fifties (almost at the same time that the first murgas in Tenerife began to timidly parade through the streets), Cádiz created in its festivities the figures of the queen and the bridesmaids, who were to accompany her in the gala dinner, the honor ball, the floral offering to the Virgin of the Rosary, the visit to the most popular neighborhoods and the distribution of alms to the poor. All the queens and ladies belonged to the “good families” of the regime, and the celebration, of course, began to be broadcast on the NO-DO and became part of Spain’s tourist attraction.
The festivities, at this point, can already be considered almost carnivals. In 1960, the now legendary Paco Alba presented the chirigota Los Pajeros, the first troupe in the history of the Cádiz carnival. There is behavior that is unacceptable to the authorities and prior censorship, but the limits are relaxed, a trend that encourages foreign tourism and the income it generates for the city council. The same will happen in Tenerife, where, in 1961, the carnival was authorized again under the name of Winter Festivals and, in 1967, it became a Festival of National Tourist Interest.
Obviously, the Franco regime considered it an unacceptable failure to recognize that it had recovered the carnivals, but, at that point, it also knew that much of the State’s income depended on tourism, and that one of the greatest attractions of Spain as a destination was its friendliness and lightness. which he projected with his most impactful festivals, among which those in Cádiz and Tenerife were already beginning to stand out. Despite everything, they avoided calling them “carnivals” until Franco died, and they took the opportunity, when they could, to change the date, such as when they moved the Cádiz festivities from February to May in 1967.
Franco no longer knew very well what to do. On the one hand, it was a little ridiculous to assume that carnivals would never be carnivals if politicians didn’t call them that and force others to do the same. On the other hand, the liberalization of Franco’s regulations in festivals and first-rate tourist destinations could not be denied if the aim was to continue attracting foreign tourism, and even less so if the regime wanted to give a friendly image abroad, which would help it. in its negotiations to enter the European Economic Community, which began in 1964 and crystallized with the signing of a much more humble preferential trade agreement in 1970.
Perhaps it is no coincidence that the carnivals, with the name carnivals, the February dates of the carnivals and the astonishing, extravagant, hilarious and, sometimes, offensive content of the carnivals were not recovered until the Transition and the beginning of democracy .
By then, unlike what had happened before the Civil War, Spaniards from all social strata often wanted to participate in them, there were many who wanted and could wear masks that made them almost unrecognizable, and Public and critical messages with the authorities and, sometimes, with the sensitivity of the part of the population that supported them multiplied.
We wanted to live together, and we knew that living together would mean that, at times, we would feel upset or offended with our neighbors and families. We wanted to live together recognizing that freedom of expression has minimal limits and leaving behind mandatory political correctness, censorship and gags.
