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Carnaval is the most important festival in Brazil, but there are other holidays, too, from saints' days to celebrations based around elections or the World Cup.

Carnaval

When Carnaval comes, the country gets down to some of the most serious partying in the world. A Caribbean carnival might prepare you a little, but what happens in Brazil goes on longer, is more spectacular and on a far larger scale. Everywhere in Brazil, large or small, has some form of Carnaval, and in three places especially - Rio, Salvador and Olinda - Carnaval has become a mass event, involving almost the entire populations of the cities and drawing visitors from all over the world.

When exactly Carnaval begins depends on the ecclesiastical calendar: it starts at midnight of the Friday before Ash Wednesday and ends on the Wednesday night, though effectively people start partying on Friday afternoon - over five days of continuous, determined celebration. It usually happens in the middle of February, although very occasionally it can be early March. But in effect the entire period from Christmas is a kind of run-up to Carnaval. People start working on costumes, songs are composed and rehearsals staged in school playgrounds and back yards, so that Carnaval comes as a culmination rather than a sudden burst of excitement and colour.

During the couple of weekends immediately before Carnaval proper there are carnival balls, bailes carnavalescos, which get pretty wild. Don't expect to find many things open or to get much done in the week before Carnaval, or the week after it, when the country takes a few days off to shake off its enormous collective hangover. During Carnaval itself, stores open briefly on Monday and Tuesday mornings, but banks and offices stay closed. Domestic airlines, local and inter-city buses run a Sunday service during the period.

Three Brazilian carnivals in particular have become famous, each with a very distinctive feel. The most familiar and most spectacular is in Rio , dominated by samba and the parade of samba schools down the enormous concrete expanse of the gloriously named Sambodromo. It is one of the world's great sights, and is televised live to the whole country. However, it has its critics. It is certainly less participatory than Olinda or Salvador, with people crammed into grandstands watching, rather than down following the schools.

Salvador is, in many ways, the antithesis of Rio, with several focuses around the old city centre: the parade is only one of a number of things going on, and people follow parading schools and the trio eletrico, groups playing on top of trucks wired for sound. Samba is only one of several types of music being played, and, if it's music you're interested in, Salvador is the best place to hear and see it.

Olinda , in a magical colonial setting just outside Recife, has a character all its own, less frantic than Rio and Salvador; musically it's dominated by frevo, the fast, whirling beat of Pernambuco.

Some places you would think are large enough to have an impressive Carnaval are in fact notoriously bad at it: cities in this category are Sao Paulo, Brasilia and Belo Horizonte. On the other hand, there are also places which have much better Carnavals than you would expect: the one in Belem is very distinctive, with the Amazonian food and rhythms of the carimbo, and Fortaleza also has a good reputation. The South, usually written off by most people as far as Carnaval is concerned, has major events in Florianopolis primarily aimed at attracting Argentine and Sao Paulo tourists, and the smaller but more distinctive Carnaval in Laguna. There are full details of the events, music and happenings at each of the main Carnavals under the relevant sections of the guide.

Other festivals

The third week in June sees the festas juninas , mainly for children, who dress up in straw hats and checked shirts and release paper balloons with candles attached (to provide the hot air), causing anything from a fright to a major conflagration when they land.

Elections and the World Cup are usually excuses for impromptu celebrations, too, while official celebrations, with military parades and patriotic speeches, take place on September 7 (Independence Day) and November 15, the anniversary of the declaration of the Republic.

In towns and rural areas you may well stumble across a dia de festa , the day of the local patron saint. It is all very simple: the image of the saint is paraded through the town, with a band and firecrackers, a thanksgiving mass is celebrated, and then everyone turns to the secular pleasures of the fair, the market and the bottle. In Belem this tradition reaches its fullest expression in the Cirio on the second Sunday of October, when crowds of over a million follow the procession of the image of Nossa Senhora de Nazare, but most festas are small-scale, small-town events.

In recent years many towns have created new festivals, usually glorified industrial fairs or agricultural shows . Often these events are named after the local areas' most important product such as the Festa Nacional do Frango e do Peru (chickens and turkeys). Occasionally these local government creations can be worth attending as some promote local popular culture as well as industry. One of the best is Pomerode's annual Festa Pomerana which takes place in the first half of January and has done much to encourage the promotion of local German traditions.