Throughout the year, the generally staid and courteous Portuguese have numerous opportunities to let their hair down and celebrate with friends and family. Each municipality has a patron saint and a saint’s day, which is celebrated with church processions, dancing, music, wine, and fireworks in honour of the patron saint. Another popular festival in Portugal is known as a sarau, which is an athletic or cultural event in which participants paint, play music, read poetry, or express themselves in other ways through art. While the majority of Portugal’s festivals are religious in character, no event is more vibrant than Carnaval, which takes place in February.
Carnaval
Portugal’s Carnaval, one of the country’s most famous exports to its largest former colony, Brazil, may not be as well-known as its Brazilian or Caribbean counterparts, but it ranks among the world’s most unforgettable events. Each municipality celebrates differently, but none more than Lisbon’s Parque Naçes, where street parades and theatrical performances are adorned with elaborate costumes, masks, and floats that take weeks to construct. The Algarve celebrates Carnaval by sailing along the coast in intricately adorned traditional Portuguese boats.
Holy Week
Braga has the most ornate of Portugal’s numerous Holy Week processions, with streets decorated with religious symbols and alters draped with flowers and lights known as passos. On Easter Sunday, after parades of floats and torchbearers assemble at the parish church, the priest enters on a flower-strewn floor. Folk dancing and pyrotechnics lend a festive element to these solemn religious observances
Fatima Pilgrimage
None of the monthly pilgrimages to Portugal’s Our Lady of Fatima sanctuary are as huge as those held on the anniversary of the Virgin Mary’s appearance at this precious spot. Between May 11 and 13, thousands of faithful attend mass in a variety of languages, Stations of the Cross, and candlelit processions during which spectators wave white handkerchiefs as they bid farewell to Jesus’ mother.
Festa De São João
Festa de São João is a Midsummer festival held in the northern Portuguese city of Porto on the night of 23 June, when thousands of people descend on the city centre and more traditional neighbourhoods to pay homage to Saint John the Baptist in a party that combines sacred and profane traditions.
Sintra Festival
Between June and July, the UNESCO World Heritage site of Sintra hosts some of the finest ballet dancers, pianists and chamber musicians during this cultural celebration. Past performers have played for the likes of Paris’ chamber philharmonic and Lisbon’s Gulbenkian Orchestra. Former palaces, churches, parks, and country estates are among the festival’s stately venues.
National Agriculture Fair at Santarém
Each year, the largest agricultural show in Portugal takes place for ten days in June in Santarém, the capital of the fertile agricultural province of Ribatejo. While the Ribatejo Fair is centred on agriculture and animal production, it also has a vibrant program of bullfighting, folk singing, and dancing, as well as a procession of campinos, or bull herders. Numerous other European countries participate in the Feira Nacional de Agricultura by exhibiting farm animals and machinery. Santarém also has an annual gastronomy festival in October that focuses on regional cuisine.
