Festa dos Rapazes and the Winter Masquerades of Trás-os-Montes

When the cold settles over the Terra Fria Transmontana and the days grow short around the winter solstice, the villages of north-eastern Trás-os-Montes let themselves be overrun by masks, cowbells and costumes of gaudy fringes. This is the Festa dos Rapazes, one of the oldest and most enigmatic expressions of the Portuguese winter masquerades, in which the unmarried young men of each settlement take, for a few days, symbolic command of the community.

A solstice rite

The Festa dos Rapazes belongs to the festive cycle that runs, broadly speaking, from 24 December to 6 January, layering the Christian celebrations of Christmas and Epiphany over a pre-Christian substratum bound to the turning of the solar year. The solstice is experienced as a moment of the death and rebirth of time: the communal bonfires, the din of the cowbells and the presence of the masks are understood as gestures of purification and of an assertion of life in the face of the darkest point of the year.

Depending on the village, the same festival takes on different names — Festa dos Caretos in Aveleda, Festa da Mocidade in Montesinho and Gimonde, Festa dos Reis in Baçal and Rio de Onor, or simply Festa de Natal in Varge and França. Beneath this diversity of names a common core persists: the leading role of the young men and the ritual figure of the masked man.

The caretos and the masks

The careto is the central figure of these masquerades. He wears a quilted costume covered in long woollen fringes, predominantly red, yellow and green, and conceals his face beneath a mask of leather, tin or wood, often with a protruding nose and a demonic expression. At his waist he bears cowbells whose sound announces his arrival before he is even seen.

The mask does not merely hide a face: it frees its wearer from everyday rules, sanctioning the controlled transgression that lies at the heart of every ritual of inversion.

As they make their rounds through the village, the caretos chase the inhabitants, above all the young women, and collect donations for the festival. This licence for disorder is strictly temporary and framed by ancient rules — a logic of inversion that brings the Festa dos Rapazes close to the other Iberian masquerades of winter and carnival, of which the celebrated Caretos de Podence, in Macedo de Cavaleiros, are the best-known example.

The mordomos, the loas and the passage into adulthood

The festival is organised and run by the unmarried young men themselves, who gather in the Casa da Festa (Festival House) under the authority of the mordomos. It is they who control access, distribute tasks and ensure the continuity of the ritual. Among the most eagerly awaited moments are the loas: rhyming quatrains, recited in the public square, which recount in satirical fashion the most extraordinary episodes that occurred in the village over the course of the year, seasoned with sharp social criticism.

On the anthropological level, the Festa dos Rapazes functions as a rite of passage. Participation marks the entry of the young men — traditionally from the age of sixteen — into adulthood and into the full life of the community. The physical trials that close the festival often designate the following year’s mordomos, ensuring that the charge is handed down from generation to generation.

Safeguarding and continuity

Rural depopulation, emigration and the economic transformations of the twentieth century gravely threatened these traditions, which survived thanks to the dedication of the communities and the work of researchers and museums, foremost among them the Museu Ibérico da Máscara e do Traje (Iberian Museum of the Mask and Costume) in Bragança. Today, the winter masquerades of Trás-os-Montes are valued as intangible cultural heritage of great significance, candidates for inclusion in the National Inventory of Intangible Cultural Heritage and recognised as one of the most singular expressions of the popular culture of northern Portugal.