Pero Paulo Festival
Here we go again - can you believe it . Yet ANOTHER carnival in Spain resembling something out of The Wicker Man this time in Villanueva de La Vera in Extramadura. The festival, three days before Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent, features a straw figure of “Pero Palo” dressed in black with a black hat whilst the men of the town dance around the figure, beating and taunting him until his head is knocked off before a drum roll and then buriel. It is said the victim was a bandit who was executed in this way whilst others say that it is a theatrical tradition from the 16th-century to scare those who were found guilty by the the Inquisition. Can these carnivals get any more brutal!
