Carnival in Bilbao

Carnival has started in Bilbao! Our students have been celebrating this event in style: some students dressed up as pirates, others as bees or Arab princes– and some even dressed up as teachers. The one common thing among all students, however, has been the huge smile on their faces as they have been enjoying the festivities.

Carnival is being celebrated in Bilbao from the 3rd until the 8th of March and, as always, it began with the traditional parade. Children join the festival in a parade that passes through the Gran Vía, from the Albia Gardens to the Plaza Nueva, where a huge party awaits them, along with music and the traditional “chocolatada” (a celebration where doughnuts and chocolate are the main food!)

“Like a child with new trainers” is the chosen advertising slogan for this year´s Carnival. This is a nice expression in Spanish, referring to happiness, along the lines of the English idiom “like a kid in a sweet shop” and our students asked us about its significance. Today, on Monday, some students arrived late to school because of the “Carnival excesses,” a huge deeply-rooted traditional party in Bilbao, with music, parades, confetti and where, once a year, people don masks and act like the one person they´ve always wanted to be.

Such acts of vivid imagination are one of the main characteristics of Carnival in Bilbao and, with very little money and lots of creativity, people manage to create highly entertaining and original outfits worthy of the first prize for best costume. Although children are the ones who get most involved in this tradition, our students of Spanish certainly haven´t been missing the opportunity and have barely stopped dancing and having a good time. For Carnival, everyone feels on top of the world and, furthermore, our students have been singing and dancing and practising their Spanish, and the experience of Carnival in Bilbao will undoubtedly be one of the stand-out memories of their time in Spain.