Carnival

The Crikvenica Riviera's winter slumber receives a rather cheerful awakening with the arrival of carnival. It's a time for hosting numerous events, typified by the cheerful atmosphere and a great variety of colourful and imaginatively designed masks. Every year, as they make their way through the local villages, the carnival's participants sing and bang their drums loudly to chase away the spirits of winter and to summon spring back to life. Traditionally, masked parties take place on Saturdays, and tea parties with tombola on Sundays. There are also large carnival parades with groups from across the Kvarner area. On Ash Wednesday, local people read out "the sentence", a text criticising the state of society and making fun of certain events. After that comes the burning of the Pust – a puppet that gets held responsible for everything that has gone wrong in the previous year and that is named after actual social or political events in the area. Each year, masked groups from Crikvenica, Dramalj, Jadranovo and Selce participate in the International Carnival in Rijeka. In recent years, Dramalj has hosted the Summer Carnival at the end of July – an event aimed at presenting the area's carnival traditions to its summertime visitors. More information about carnival in Crikvenica can be found at www.maskare.net.