Cadiz Carnival 2019 with Citylife Madrid

This past weekend I was able to celebrate Carnival in Cadiz, Spain! Located in the Andalusia region, Cadiz holds the second biggest carnival in Spain, following only Tenerife in the Canary Islands. Fortunately for me, I was able to enjoy the sunshine and festive festivities of Cadiz during my two day visit for a moderately affordable price, thanks to Citylife Madrid!

 

How I Went

I went with Citylife Madrid, a student tour company that offers trips throughout Spain, Portugal, and Morocco. The crowed was mainly American study abroad kids, Erasmus students, and about a handful of language assistants sprinkled in, and I really wasn’t trying to fuck with any of that during the trip. Not to sound pretentious or unpatriotic, but I honorarily renounced my U.S. citizenship November 8, 2016, so being around so many white Americans after months was a huge culture shock for me and I really prefer not to deal with that kind of energy anymore. Not only that, I felt OLD! I’m 23 years old and I was like, what? You were born in 1998? My traveling age has peaked.

Where We Stayed

The Resort

We arrived at our resort, Hotel ILUNION Sancti Petri, a little after 5 PM by bus, which gave us a bit of time to get settled before the buffet and party that would be held later that night. If I could make only one suggestion for future trips, I would organize the bus to leave Thursday night in order to get there in the morning because the resort is beautiful, however we had almost no time to actually enjoy the amenities. I always stay in hostels, even on the other group tours I’ve been on, so this was a nice switch up from my usual top bunk, twin-sized bed, shared dormitory, shared shower lifestyle. 

 

The Location

Chiclana de la Frontera is smallish city located south of Cadiz. About a 40 minute drive to and from the Cadiz center, this beachy town has a very nice beach, Playa de la Barossa, that is only a 15 minute walk, and a ton of bougie looking resorts in the area. Though it’s a mood, it wasn’t really the mood I was trying to be in for the occasion because all of the carnival action was in Cadiz, and it would have been a pain to figure out the buses (if they even ran over there) or pay for a taxi to get back. Though Playa de la Barossa is definitely a lot nicer than Cadiz’s main beach in the center, and if I had money I would definitely go back to this area just to chill and act stuck up.

Costs

A few people were complaining about the cost of the trip, being it’s only two days, but I thought the price was fairly reasonable based on the transportation and hotel alone. Again, I wish we could have left Thursday night so we would have had more time in Chiclana de la Frontera, because otherwise it would have made more sense to stay somewhere in the Cadiz center. But like I said, the resort was so nice that I didn’t even care. Plus, an all-you-can eat breakfast buffet was included in the price, in addition to transportation to and from Carnival, so the costs pretty much broke even at the end. I did not check hostel prices in Cadiz during this weekend when I tried to plan this trip on my own last minute, but according to Busbud there were no direct buses to Cadiz– you’d have to go to pass through most likely Seville or Malaga to get here, prolonging the trip even more (and racking up more euros), so this really was the best option.

You also had the option of purchasing an all-you-can-eat, all-you-can-drink dinner buffet for only 15 euros on Friday, the day of arrival. The food was pretty good, though I wish I would have arrived earlier to take advantage of it more because you only had two hours. Pretty much everyone did this, so it was almost the perfect pre-game to the pre-game before the party. 

La Fiesta

Before I knew the itinerary I was determined to go out in Cadiz, but it didn’t happen because we were so far. I was slightly pressed because I brought the cutest off-the-shoulder gold dress I purchased from the thrift store last week and it was lowkey wasted on the people on the trip. I took pictures in it, but I was wearing a mask the whole time so no one got a chance to see the full moment with my gold and silver earrings and necklace, sigh. Pretty much everyone was there since there was nothing else to do in the area, but it died down around 3, so people were having after-party kickbacks in their rooms.

Carnival! Copas y Cultural Appropriation

We arrived in Cadiz from Ilunion at 2 PM, so not much was happening as far as parades and shenanigans went, so we just started drinking. It was hot, so by 5 PM things started to liven up a bit because pretty much the entire center was drunk by this point.

This is my first carnival ever, and even though it was no Rio di Janeiro, the one I REALLY want to go to at some point in my life, I made it as lit as I could for a country that doesn’t understand that blackface is racist and dressing as the indigenous populations you literally colonized is cultural appropriation. Cute 5 year-old girl wearing a rasta wig dressed as Bob Marley, harmless. Grown ass adult wearing a dashiki and a monkey mask? Racism. That’s like me dressing up as a homeless person, with the E.U. flag on the back and the Spanish flag on the front asking for money because I’m broke and have to rely on Catalonia tourism to keep my country afloat. It’s offensive and there are so many other witty costumes you can wear without offending groups of people. I know that in Europe it’s supposed to be all in good fun, and I would LIKE to give Spain the benefit of a doubt and believe that it isn’t a third world country where there is absolutely no access to internet, people of color, or books to explain to people why this is wrong. But unfortunately there was nothing I could do except get as drunk as possible and forget that I, as a black person, felt uncomfortable as fuck.

Political correctness and sensitivity aside, I saw some pretty funny costumes, but I felt a bit out of place because I was more thot and everyone else was more satire. I was actually supposed to wear this outfit on my birthday, but due to certain events it never happened. I’m glad I waited until Carnival because I actually got elected Carnival Queen unanimously by the entire city of Cadiz for having such a great outfit.

 

The parade was around 7 PM (I think) and lasted about an hour. Afterwards we wandered around the city center a bit before we had to catch the shuttle back to the resort at midnight. I wish we would have stayed in the center because the nightclubs would have been popping, but everyone was dead by the time we got back.

Overall I had a wonderful time and I will definitely be attending Carnival next year, though this time in Tenerife. I’m also excited to return to Cadiz to do some more sightseeing and check out the nightlife. I’m actually most likely renewing in Andalusia for next year, more on that in another blog, so hopefully I will get placed in Cadiz or at least somewhere with a beach! It felt like summer even in the earliest of March, and I can’t wait to discover more of the southern region next month during Easter break!