There are uses and customs to which we are so accustomed that they go unnoticed and we fit within normality -our normality-, but if you stop to think about them , they generate a strangeness similar to that experienced when a word is repeated so much that it loses its meaning. It could be the case, for example, of every December 31, when thousands of people congregate at the Puerta del Sol to eat grapes, or at the end of Carnival, when the traditional burial of the sardine takes place.
In its raw form – stripped of context – the burial of the sardine is a very strange act: a group of people lead a funeral procession in honor of a fish they will bury and end their peculiar itinerary with a bonfire. The key is, then, in that context: in the why.
The answer -which mixes some history and some legend passed down from generation to generation- goes back to nothing less than the eighteenth century, specifically to a batch of sardines that Carlos III ordered in 1768 in view of Lent and that arrived in the capital in poor condition.
According to what Enrique Orsi, then first vice-president of the Alegre Cofradía del Entierro de la Sardina, told Antiguos Cafés de Madrid a few years ago, in an attempt to give it a way out, the king gave it to the people of Madrid, who were going through a famine.
The response of the people of Madrid was equal to the monarch’s gesture and, coinciding with the celebration of the end of the carnival, the people “drunk, wanting to party and needing to mess with the king came out singing, dancing and teasing him“.
La Alegre Cofradía del Entierro de la Sardina (The Merry Brotherhood of the Burial of the Sardine)
Precisely La Alegre Cofradía del Entierro de la Sardina is the one that has been responsible for keeping this tradition alive to this day, defying even the times in which its celebration was banned. And the fact is that they carry by flag that joy to which its name refers and the festive character of the celebration that Goya captured so well in paintings such as The Burial of the Sardine ( 1814-1816) or The Maneuvering of the Pelele (1791-1792).
The determination and will to preserve this tradition was born in the surroundings of the Rastro, as an initiative of the antique dealer Serafín Villén and some friends who rescued it from oblivion -in fact today, the headquarters of the brotherhood is located in what used to be Villén’s antique shop-.
That symbolic location -where the different coffins with which the brotherhood has paraded are preserved- is also the place from which the funeral procession departs every February (Rodrigo de Guevara Street, 4).
Dressed in their typical costumes, black cloak and hat, the brothers begin a morning tour that takes them through the Madrid de los Austrias to the Plaza Mayor. And as the brotherhood is made up exclusively of men, the women participate in the funeral as part of their own peña: the Alegre Cofradía del Boquerón.
In the afternoon, leaving from the hermitage of San Antonio de la Florida, the Asociación Comparsa de Gigantes y Cabezudos joins the party as far as the Fuente de los Pajaritos in the Plaza de las Moreras, in the Casa de Campo: according to tradition, that is the place where the sardine -which is actually made of wood- was buried. At the end, a bonfire is lit and it is time to say goodbye to the carnival.
The program of Carnival 2025 in Madrid
The Madrid City Council has already released the program of the Madrid Carnival 2025 and the burial of the sardine will take place on March 5, Ash Wednesday, between 18h and 21h. The route will run through the streets of Comandante Fortea, Santa Comba and Doctor Casals, to enter the Casa de Campo and the burial of the fish will take place next to the Fuente de los Pajaritos.
There will also be other unmissable events of this festival such as the “manteo del pelele”, the meetings of “comparsas” and “chirigotas” or the parade of giants and “cabezudos” (big-heads). The complete program can be consulted on this website.
Carnival beyond the capital
Carnival celebrations are not limited to Madrid city: other towns, cities and municipalities in the Community of Madrid are also warming up their engines to welcome the festival. The manteo del pelele, a parade of murgas or a parade of floats are just some of the activities that will invite the neighbors of the region to take to the streets. You can check the details in this article.