Benidorm Carnival - 10th and 13th February 2024
Carnival Time in Benidorm - The Carnival is an annual celebration, the date is dictated by when Easter falls, the Parades always take place on the Saturday before Ash Wednesday with the main parades on the Saturday, 10th February 2024, there are 2, a children’s one in the morning around 10.00 and a main adult one in the evening about 20.30.
The children's parade will take place on Saturday morning. Participants will gather at 10 a.m. on Escuelas Street to begin the march half an hour later. The arrival will be at the Plaza del Ayuntamiento and later the awards will be presented.
In the afternoon, at 8:30 p.m., there will be the concentration of the adult parade, which will begin at 9 p.m. from Calle Venus and will also end in the Plaza del Ayuntamiento. Once the parade is over, the traditional festival will be held in the tent and during it the awards ceremony will take place.
The Carnival finishes on Shrove Tuesday 13th February 2024 with the ritual Burial of the Sardine.
Children's Carnival
Adults Carnival
Some roads will be closed for the processions.
Carnival time in Benidorm
The Burial of the Sardine
This event starts at 9:30 p.m. in the Plaza Mayor and will take place along Tomás Ortuño, Limones, Ruzafa, Paseo de la Carretera and Paseo de Colón streets, where the sardine will be burned. .
The burial ceremony came to replace older Spanish customs which were held to mark the end of the winter and is symbolic of the arrival of Spring, it is also seen as a good luck ritual to ensure the fishermen, who can now venture back out to sea without fear of the winter storms, had good hauls.
It’s also a symbolic burial of the past. The ceremony is stripping away the past, in a socially established ritual of chaos, burning out the mayhem of carnival and the long winter months, and ushering in from the ashes a new year, a society reborn and serious once again, ready to face the hardships of the future.