Fishing festivals, 10 Feb 2027
Burial of the Sardine
A mock funeral for a sardine that closes Carnival in many Spanish towns on Ash Wednesday.
The Entierro de la Sardina is a Spanish carnival custom in which a sardine, usually a large figure of one, is carried through the streets in a mock funeral procession and burned or buried. It marks the end of the feasting of Carnival and the start of the Lenten fast, when meat was given up and fish eaten instead. Madrid holds it on Ash Wednesday, and Goya painted the scene in the early 1800s. In Murcia a much larger Burial of the Sardine closes the city's spring festival, the week after Easter.
Still to be written: European pilchard, European anchovy.