American in Spain

Due to Easter falling early this year, the annual local children’s Carnival celebration fell during my annual February golf trip. I was quite disappointed, since I have very much enjoyed photographing the festival in past years. However, it has been raining pretty much nonstop for all of 2013, and the weather got particularly bad last Friday when they were scheduled to have their parade, so all the activity was kept indoors. There is some talk that they might try to do the parade later this week.
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We’ve heard from past years that the nearby town of Santoña puts on a good Carnival festival. We were a little disappointed, however, to see that the parade starts at dusk rather than during the day when it’s warmer and easier to see costumes. But we decided to give it a chance anyway, so we left at around lunchtime to go have some tapas and spend a lazy afternoon in Santoña awaiting the parade. Nora, of course, was delighted to get a chance to get more milage out of her Sevillana dress.
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Today was the big Carnival parade, sort of a “Halloween meets Mardi Gras” thing that is very typical for children in Spanish culture. Apparently I did such a fine job last year that my presence was simply assumed as The Official Daycare Photographer. Perhaps in honor of that job, I was also given a leading role in this year’s costume theme. About a month ago, I was told by Adela, the daycare owner, that this year for Carnival the kids would be dressed up as dwarves, the daycare employees would all be dressed as Snow White, Adela herself would be the Evil Stepmother, and I, the only parent with a themed costume, would be dressed as none other than Prince Charming.
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