Carnaval in Sitges... or, quoth Sleezah, “GAY BAR CARNAVAL 2011 BIIIIITCHESSSSSSSS”

Thanks to the efforts of the Unreasonably Nihilistic, Hateful, Antagonistic and Pompous Professor of Youth (aka Prof Tenorio, who will from here on out be known as the acronym for that aforementioned title = U.N.H.A.P.P.Y.), literally less than 1/3 of our program decided to go to the biggest Carnaval party of the year, in Sitges. 

Carnaval itself is a strange fruit. From the get-go, I was a little confused what exactly Carnaval is, and I never really got a straight answer. Explanations of the holiday mostly consisted of: “You wear costumes.” “You get drunk.” “You get drunk and wear costumes.” “There is a parade.” “You get drunk in a costume at a parade.

Monday of this week was a national holiday where most businesses and schools were closed. One would assume it was a super-concentrated Carnaval holiday where Catalanes take a break from beating the Christmas Shit in order to beat a Lent Poop, or something, but, in actuality, nothing was even going on Monday. As far as I could tell, the “holiday” on Monday was “We all needed to go out on Sunday night, so we get to sleep on Monday”-holiday…. Spanish work ethic, guys.

Sitges, a small town outside of Barcelona, is supposed to have one of the best Carnaval celebrations in Spain—with a giant parade, masses of street-drinking youth (Portugal, hollah back!), and general tomfoolery—so a small few of us from our program went to go see the shenanigans.

Sitges is the de facto Provincetown of Cataluña. Since Barcelona’s actual gayborhood “Gaixample” (pronounced Gay-shahmp-lay) turned out to be ridiculously fake—though perhaps our first clue might have been the name “Gaixample,” which indeed suggests a weird Sodexho cafeteria food or a robot—I’ve been looking for the actual gay area in these parts for a while, and Sitges definitely delivered. 

Note the old drag queen in the background of this photo

So, to the best I can define Carnaval from my experience, it is indeed just a week long of partying in costumes, and, sometimes, parades. The culmination of that week is Tuesday evening, Fat Tuesday, where people party into dawn… and then supposedly go to church for Ash Wednesday hung over. Something like that.

Now, when I hear the word “costume,” I can’t help but worry about what kind of unfortunate sexy-wolf-esque costumes are going to come into my vision.

However, admirably, Carnaval in Sitges was not even 20% as slutty as Halloween in the US. Girls dress in actual costumes, and even if they are a “cat” or “devil” it’s because they are wearing an actual, chest-and-leg-and-vagina-covering costume that actually looks like a devil or cat, vs. an American Apparel translucent low-V jumpsuit with cat ears. The few people we saw who were looking truly sexy-tiger-or-sexy-ethnic-stereotype-or-sexy-garbage-man-Halloween-costume-y were definitely sad American tourists who didn’t get the memo. 

As mentioned many times, the men all just wear drag, and they don’t go halfway—makeup, fake boobs, tights, the whole deal. And some of them just dress like Bender.

Notice the guy in blackface in the background? Spain is really really PC, all the time.

There is a giant parade in Sitges that literally goes on for hours and hours. That said, honestly, once you reach a certain level of inebriation, the parade mostly just serves as sparkly backdrop to your drinking.

Example: all of these pictures were taken 2-3 meters away from the many shirtless men and drag queens dancing on sparkly floats in the parade. Yet, do you notice any parade? Neither did we.

Many things are a blur to me. I actually didn’t consume that much alcohol (split one bottle of wine with Mikey and sipped another girl’s drink), but the rush of everyone and all the colors kind of puts you into a Carnaval state of crazy. Whatever the reason, I danced and sang and was generally and genuinely jolly in a massive crowd on the street, and it was pretty wonderful. These photos seem night-time-digital-camera-y, but, honestly, my perception of the event was similarly sparkly.

The next morning, having just watched the scarily accurate Glee episode Blame it on the Alcohol I could not help but re-watch a video I had filmed in the bar roughly a kajillion times.

It is pretty classic: Sleezah yelling stereotypical things that a drunk American girl would scream over shitty digital camera videos while drunk in a gay bar in Spain, i.e. “GAY BAR CARNAVAL 2011111111111 BIIIIIIIIITCHES” as much-more-together Mama J is just like, “Are you taking a video?” This ridiculously unfortunate/miraculous moment of drunk is pretty much the definition of my night.

I should say: readers of this blog, I post this extremely incriminating video on the internet as my personal gift to you, for dealing with my oft-hyphenated phrases and excessive use of grammatically incomplete sentences (like: Oh, Sleezah. Too drunk. Never again. Etc.) Love you kids.