Carnival!

During the past few days it was a common sight to see people walking around in fancy dresses, mostly kids, a few selfconscious teens and some adults (maybe teachers? since P. told me that the teachers at his school were all dressed as dominoes) but today it was the official carnival day with parades and all the party that this town can muster, so almost all children and many adults were dressed up and that's just the normal people who went to see the parades.
The picture is the actual poster from this carnival in Sabadell. Is, as usual, very pretty and colourful.

The parades were due to start at 4pm at one end of the city and finish at 6 at the other end. This being a Latin country... we were one of the few to arrive to the central square, and we arrived at 5PM!! Anyway, we had sometime to have coffee with the traditional Carnival cake (there seems to be a cake for every occasion here, and so far, all delicious).
First to arrive were the families with toddlers and babies almost all dressed up. So cute!! Everywhere you look they were tiny babes in pushchairs and cute toddlers dressed as in those cute calendars.
Then most families arrived, almost all the children were dressed, from some odd stuff like a family of popcorn bags (all 3 of then, including dad) to families dressed matching each other (like the Beckhams do) as the characters of Wizard of Oz: dad was the no-brain scarecrow, of course, then mum was the tin-woman, a little girl was Dorothy (P. point out the shoes were brown, thus, wrong. He knows movies) and the toddler brother was the cutes lion ever.
The array of dresses in the crowd were lovely, from the typical pirates or red devils for boys to princesses and fairies for girls, then TV characters (spiderman to pokemons) and all sort of stuff.
The last to arrive, fashionably late, were the teens, some dressed up some ... well... you're never sure with teens these days. :) In this crowd the dress were more gear to impress the other sex, with the girls dressed as cat women and boys dress as... well... boys!
The crowd in itself was something to watch. So we just strolled around looking and trying to figure who or what they were.

Then the parade arrived. First the police opening it with 2 bikes, not even policeman are serious here, and those 2 were obviously local boys as they were waving around and getting some back slaps from bystander. That alone remind me that we are, after all, living in a smallish town!!
The first 2 lorries carried the small children and babies, all dressed up and looking quite puzzled as they don't have a clue as what's going on. It amazed me that no-one was crying, even though the music was quite loud, and i saw at least one that was totally asleep, fancy dress and all!

Then there was a bit of everything, from a Chinese dragon followed by geishas (?) and some sort of imaginary animals of some sort, to a Trojan inspired group with horse and all. Of course, all dancing load Latin tunes and dancing as if the were Brazilians anyway.
My favourite was a group of people dressed as nuns, guys and girls, dancing to tunes such as "like a virgin" and doing all those hands-in-the-air stuff that is mostly seen in those American evangelist programs. They were hilarious.

As it seems to be the custom, there were some sweets tossed from the lorries, but nothing like in other fiestas, but, of course, they were also busy throwing confetti all over the place.

What amazed me the most was the fact that all sort of ages were involved in each and every group. There was not one group with just young people or just oldies, all groups has such a mix of ages that it was lovely. you could see sometimes a mother and grand-mother dressed alike and dancing while the husband was a few paces behind banging a drum or the younger boys were doing something else, such as running the dragons between the Geishas, who will playfully smack them with their fans as he passed by. Look at the lady of the picture here!!

Another thing that is unusual is that nobody was drunk. No beer cans all over the place and overflowing rubbish containers, not one person that I could see that even looked drunk. Is not that people don't drink here, if anything they probably drink more wine than in England, but they drink it in another fashion, and they definitely don't need alcohol to have fun.

Of course the parade finished well past 8pm and then I know that a band started playing in the central square and the party just went on.
We decided to go home just after the parade, I was feeling miserably during the whole weekend and when I arrived home founded out that my blood pressure was terribly low even for my usual low standards. No surprise there that I was on the brink of passing out and with a killing headache.
"The husband" reminded me that my GP already told me that I need to exercises regularly and that I was meaning to start yoga for the past month or so. I hate it when he's right!!
Here I don't walk as much as I used to in Bristol, and my fitness is going down the drain and it was only a matter of time before I started to feel the consequences.
If this doesn't motivate me to go and pay for my yoga tomorrow, nothing will do it.