Carnival for the ánimas and San Juan night

Masks, flour and smoke

Until the Civil War, carnival was the young men’s celebration. In Salvacañete they dressed up with what they had at home as people they saw passing through the village: pedlars, dealers, the travelling entertainers they called «húngaros» (Hungarians). They went out with their faces covered or blackened, sang to ask the mayor’s permission from the square and serenaded the young women with courting songs, mayos (May songs) or harvest songs, asking for a donation. In Valdemorillo de la Sierra people mainly remember the flour and smoke they threw at one another.

This was recorded in 1973 by a young man from Salvacañete, then studying to be a teacher, who would later become its chronicler, Mariano López Marín, by asking older people and writing down their songs.

For the ánimas

In many villages carnival was also a time to collect for the ánimas, souls in purgatory. In Boniches potatoes, bacon, fruit and nuts were collected on Shrove Tuesday. In Campillos-Sierra, wheat, beans, pigs’ trotters, eggs and potatoes, later auctioned in the square. In Tejadillos everything was taken to the priest’s house and auctioned on the Tuesday of carrastoliendas, the local name for carnival. In Valdemorillo the priest and the village officer collected with a little bell, and what they gathered was used to make a meal for everyone.

In Campillos-Paravientos two alcaldes de ánimas, carnival mayors for the souls, were in charge, with hats and cudgels. They charged to stop the dancing or let it continue, issued absurd proclamations at night, such as sending someone to the spring with a sieve, and could force a masked person to reveal their identity.

In Carboneras de Guadazaón the celebration continues. A fortnight beforehand, the animeros, collectors for the souls, go from house to house at night, striking doors with a cudgel; on Jueves Lardero, the Thursday before Lent, the devil comes out, a botarga, a costumed character with horns, a tail and castanets who tries to take what they have collected until the priest defeats him with the cross, and on Sunday everything is auctioned for the parish.

Without masks

After the war, going out with the face covered was banned. In most villages carnival disappeared; in Cañete it continued, but with faces uncovered. Then emigration took away those who might have revived it. Something remains: in 2024 some people in Fuentelespino de Moya still collected for the ánimas, and in Santa Cruz de Moya the winter festivities continued, from San Blas to Santa Águeda.

San Juan morning

Early on 24 June, women opened the arcas, clothes chests, and took the clothes out into the sun to keep moths away. Young women went to wash their faces at the springs, believing that it preserved their complexion, and elder was gathered and dried for colds, and horehound, which was put in stables and henhouses against lice.

Legends were told beside the water. Near the Cabriel, in Salvacañete, beside rocks called El Rey and La Reina, an enchanted princess appears every hundred years and offers passers-by a choice between herself and a golden comb. In Fuentelespino de Moya another princess lives at the Fuente de los Villares. San Juan proverbs spoke of rain, wine and love. In 2025, the man who had recorded them considered almost all these customs lost.