CARNIVAL CELEBRATION IN MADRID

In Madrid, Carnival festivities is remarkable for their brilliance and dramatic flavor consisting of choruses, fancy-dress processions, jokes, disguises and float parade, flagrant procession, fancy-dress parades, and groups of street musicians, all reaching a climax on Wednesday. During the days of Carnival you would find yourself enveloped with an unsubduable spirit of love and gaeity. If you're thinking about visiting Madrid in February, during Carnival, you will notice the city is busier than normal. Madrid is a city that loves to party and in this time you will have your fair share of bars, clubs and parties to attend.

Carnival has been celebrated in Madrid since Medieval times. However this tradition of merry making was quashed in 1938 and banned for about 40 years by General Franco, who banned the carnival since the Civil War. With the establishment of democracy in 1976 this ban was lifted and ever since, the popular event is celebrated every year.

Madrid carnival may not match up to the standards of the one in Canary islands, but it sure finishes in style. A number of fancy dress competitions are held in different parts of the city and an evening concert is organized in the Plaza Mayor. The main event is a huge parade along the Paseo de la Castellana. Here you can see some of the pics I took of it last Saturday evening.

Cibeles Fountain

On the last day i.e. on Wednesday of Carnival the pre-Lenten party culminates on Ash with the Entierro de La Sardina, the Burial of the Sardine. This is a Spanish tradition that ridicules the ancient ecclesiastical tradition of burying the fat to mark the beginning of Lenten fasting. The traditional "Entierro de la Sardina" (The Burial of the sardine) is held with the participants all dressed in black carrying a cardboard sardine in a coffin which is theatrically and mournfully buried at a famous fountain (Fuente de los Pajaritos), marking the beginning of the fasting and reflection associated with Lent .The "fun times" are buried because of la Cuaresma (the Lent) - a time of fasting and praying takes over. The sardine is a symbol which reminds the people that now they will be eating fish instead of meat.

The most popular and fanciest of the fancy dress parties (costume parties as we would call them) takes place at the Círculo de Bellas Artes. This party features a masked ball, as well as live music and DJ performances. Everything is allowed: Humans transform themselves into animals, males become females, peons strut like kings, social station is scorned, decorum is debunked and blasphemy goes unblamed.

People tend to use Carnival as a time to transform themselves...... into anything.

People dress up as animals, men dress up like women,

and it all adds up to one big spectacle.

Out of curiosity, which fancy dress would you choose

to wear in Carnival?

Sources:
http://www.asiarooms.com/
http://www.blogonetravel.com/

SPANISH PHOTOGRAPHER SAMUEL ARANDA WINS WORLD PRESS PHOTO 2011

One of my passions is photography and I am always very interested in reading everything about this topic. Today I have read that the World Press Photo of the Year revealed the name of the winners of the year 2011. I have always thought photojournalism is a very hard and risky job because they have to be always at the center of the action and that is why I think these awards are very meritorious and I admire these people so much, they are really so brave!

And this year a portrait of a veiled woman cradling a wounded relative in her arms, taken in Yemen by Spanish photographer (born in Catalonia in 1979) Samuel Aranda for The News York Times won the top World Press Photo prize and I thought this morning it would be worth it to post about it.

The photograph captured a moment in the conflict in Yemen, when demonstrators against outgoing president Ali Abdullah Saleh used a mosque in Sanaa as a field hospital to treat the wounded. But judges said it also spoke more broadly for the Arab Spring.

"The winning photo shows a poignant, compassionate moment, the human consequence of an enormous event, an event that is still going on," Aidan Sullivan, chair of the jury. "We might never know who this woman is, cradling an injured relative, but together they become a living image of the courage of ordinary people that helped create an important chapter in the history of the Middle East."

The winning photo has been compared by many in the network with the Pieta of Michelangelo.

The photojournalist, who is represented by Corbis, snapped the picture during an assignment for The New York Times. Aranda will officially receive the 55th annual award at a ceremony in Amsterdam in April and will also gain a €10,000 cash prize and Canon EOS Digital SLR Camera.

The award for his photography in Yemen marks the climax of a career that has worked for major national and international media: Efe, France Presse, Corbis, Getty ... And that has led him to dozens of places in the world, portraying the Neapolitan mafia or the transformation of Medellin, the dry Aral Sea or the Kashmir dispute. But above all, his work has focused on the Middle East, spending long periods in Israel and closely following the Arab riots in Egypt, Tunisia and finally Yemen.

He doesn't want to focus the interest for the award on himself, but to discuss the conflict in Yemen. That is his main concern.

Aranda’s work was singled out from among 101,254 submissions to the contest from 5,247 photographers from 124 countries around the world. Between 28 January and yesterday, 19 internationally recognised professionals were sifting through the entries to find the overall 2011 winner and winners across a variety of categories, such as general news, sport, people and portrait.

For anyone who wants to read more about these World Press Photo prize 2011 just click on the webpage link.

And I am also leaving some more photos of this photographer. And here is his website link: Samuel Aranda.

"I am not an artist, I just show what I see", he says



Samuel could not ever think of himself getting to the top of photojournalism

when what really fascinated him was the graffitis

and later on he started working in a photography shop,

which he left after some time to start the photojournalism adventure,

his brother German told to journalists today.


Sources:
http://www.independent.co.uk/
http://www.eitb.com/
http://www.worldpressphoto.org/
http://www.elmundo.es/

ANITA DELGADO, THE SPANISH MAHARANI DE KAPURTHALA

This is the story which scandalised Spanish society, the real-life fairytale of the teenage flamenco dancer who married a prince began in Madrid in 1906 with the marriage of Alfonso XIII of Spain to Victoria Eugenie of Battenburg. She was a granddaughter of Queen Victoria and also the grandmother of the current King of Spain, Juan Carlos I.

An Indian Prince was amongst the British contingent attending the celebrations with the Prince of Wales and although he had a one hundred and twenty women harem (four leading women and the rest concubines) 34 years old Jagatjit Singh fell in love with 16 years old Anita, when he saw her dancing in the Café Kursal in Madrid. Jagatjit Singh, the Maharaja of Kapurthala, was captivated by the young teenager, but his attempts to win her over were at first rejected out of hand. He left for France after an assassination attempt was made on the royal couple, but continued his courtship from Paris. Anita finally agreed to marry him, and travelled to Paris, and was installed in a luxurious palace. She was not to meet the prince again until she had learnt French: she was also instructed in all the social niceties of the time, before travelling to Kapurthala for her marriage.

The couple married in January 1908, in a traditional Sikh wedding where the young girl from Málaga arrived for the ceremony on the back of an elephant. She took the name of Prem Kaur.

In fact, Ana Delgado was purchased. The huge sums of money received by her family, the luxurious gifts, fabulous jewelry,….. All that was just the beginning of a fascinating personal story and also full of contrasts. The Rani Prem Kaur of Kapurthala, as she was called after the wedding, lived surrounded by extraordinary wealth, servants, exquisite whims of glitter and oriental pomp beyond imagination, a universe, in short, magnificent and enviable. She felt left out for other women in the Kamra Palace, the former palace of Majaraha, and lived alone and full of nostalgia for her family and her country.

Anita Delgado spent the next 18 years of her life in Jagatjit Singh’s kingdom in the foothills of the Himalayas, as the Maharaja’s fifth wife and the Maharani of Kapurthala. The couple had one son, Ajit Singh. She lived a life of unbelievable luxury, showered with jewels, and travelling widely throughout India with her husband, as well as to Europe and the Americas, followed by crowds of paparazzi wherever they went. Her husband even built her a palace modelled on Versailles.

But, as the years passed by, the Maharaja started having affairs, and she, feeling neglected, started her own - with her stepson, the Maharaja's son with an older wife, and who was the same age as Delgado. His camp would rather paint a picture of an opportunistic social ladder climber, who lived a scandalously lavish life, and that it was her "misbehavin'" that drove the Maharaja to other women...

Anyway, the fairytale came to an end after a visit to London in 1924, when her husband heard that she had had an affair with one of her stepsons. The couple lived separately until their divorce in 1925, and Anita left India for good. The Maharaja allowed her to keep her title of Maharani and all the gifts she had received during their marriage, and gave her a life pension. She also kept her Indo-Punjabi nationality. Part of the agreement, however, was that she could never remarry and must never return to India. She took with her on her return to Europe all the skills of her life as a Maharani: how to play the piano, how to dance and conduct herself in high society. She was also able to speak fluent French and English by this time. The opulent lifestyle continued in Europe where the Maharani became involved in a secret relationship with her secretary, Gines Rodríguez Fernández de Segura, which endured for the rest of her life until her death in Madrid in 1962.


with her lover in Biarritz

 The Spanish actress, Penelope Cruz, bought the screen rights to the book, casting herself in the starring role alongside Bollywood co-stars in a silver-screen adaptation of Anita’s astonishing life story. The Maharaja’s descendants have been trying to block the project, describing it as a ‘scandalous portrayal’ of what really took place.

Like any respectable royal, she became a discerning collector of crazy-opulent jewelry. Delgado's favourite piece, as she always expressed, is this juggernaut of an emerald, shaped like a crescent, and flanked by swirls and cascades of diamonds (See below. And remember to breathe.).

with the jewell above

Invariably, most of her other pieces of jewelry were jaw-dropping opulent and many pieces were of designs influenced by the belle epoque and art-deco movements in Europe, and brought to life by the finest jewelry craftsmen in Punjab.

All these jewels belonging to Anita Delgado were sold in Christie's in London on December 12, 2007. Wow! She could afford it indeed, she was a maharani!!

Source:

http://www.riadbellepoque.com/

http://www.kapurthalaprincess.com/

http://www.mayaruhi.blogspot.com/