After almost 20 years, posts here will now only be occasional ( |
| Fantasy moving target that exists for real in Arona |
Easter, Lent and thus the dates of carnival that precedes it, are movable feasts on the Christian Liturgical calendar. At Arona Council, this tips over into the realms of moving target and even outright fantasma. I'd dearly wanted to come up with a "magic formula" for calculating the dates of carnival in Los Cristianos (as I've done with the other big carnivals on the island) - and given the demand for information and visits to posts about Los Cristianos Carnival - I think you'd like me to, too.
So after translating this year's program, I thought I'd go through the archives to see if a pattern would emerge that would allow us to arrive at a method to predict when these fiestas would take place each year, but, sadly, it doesn't work.
Dates of Los Cristianos Carnival Main Parade through the years:
Taking the dates of Shrove Tuesday (the most reliable point in the carnival calendar) and the dates of the main parade of Los Cristianos Carnival (the event that is probably of most interest to visitors) over the last few years, I plotted how many days there were between the two dates. In the distant past, the Los Cristianos carnaval main parade had always taken place 12 days after Shrove Tuesday.
Some delay is understandable, as fairground attractions, food stalls, etc., have to be dismantled and moved from the north of the island and rebuilt in the south.
But then they went and mucked things up, by making it a week later, with the main parade 19 days after Shrove Tuesday instead. Even worse, it has since been moved forward by a further week to make a gap of 26 days and then even as much as 33 days. New events are being added to their schedule every year; some of the events that used to take place mid-week have been moved to weekends and the length of the carnival is longer than it used to be, so it just isn't possible to predict.
Arona Council published the dates for 2023, but originally, used the wrong year's calendar. So I contacted them and asked if they were sure, because I didn't think they meant to infer that their main parade could be on a Monday. Eventually, the penny dropped, they updated their calendar and confirmed the dates to me. In mid-February, I checked and found that the whole thing had been moved a week. Are they really totally unaware that people might have booked flights, holidays, etc., on purpose to come to their carnival? Honestly, it makes me angry on your behalf.
Still, confirmation of the details for 2015 came just 2 days before events began.
We try to update each year, but by the time we know, it's almost always too late.
We try to update each year, but by the time we know, it's almost always too late.