Updated on 20 September 2024
Original article published on 1 May 2019
The International Festival of the Iberian Mask in Lisbon returns to the city after being interrupted in 2020 due to the pandemic.
In this new edition, it returns to its original location, parading through the Pombaline Downtown, which, in our view, gives it greater impact due to the narrow streets that bring the public closer to the parade. This time, the event calendar has also been altered, moving from May to September, thus becoming part of the Festas na Rua programme.
In May 2019, when this article was first published, the Festival took place in Império Square, in Belém. Here, we not only talk about this event, but mainly about masks as a liberating heritage and their role throughout history.
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The International Festival of the Iberian Mask in Lisbon
This festival, held since 2006, initially brought together masked groups from Portugal and Spain, later incorporating other participants.
It is a grand event that, over several days, showcases various aspects of popular culture, united around ancestral rituals linked to the use of masks: an explosion of colour, folk art, music, all of great historical and cultural richness.
The highlight is undoubtedly the parades, where Iberian masked groups, along with guests from other origins, interact with the public, creating moments of fun.
Equally noteworthy is the parallel programme aimed at involving public participation, such as music performances, seminars…
But before going to see the masked people in the International Festival of the Iberian Mask in Lisbon, let’s find out about the use of masks.
Masks, A Liberator Cultural Heritage
Masks have the purpose of pretending or imitating an image different from that of the individual who uses it, allowing him or her greater freedom of satire or caricature; they’re related to the symbolic, enigmatic, secret and initiatory.
It is also a creative object of artisanal handicraft that ritualises states of mind. Expressions of joy, crying or terror are captured with colours that reinforce the sensations of jubilation, grief or madness.
Used since ancestral times, the masks have been reinvented and are a tradition that deserves to be preserved as a cultural heritage that reflects all human feelings.
The masked people assume antagonistic sides: sacred and profane; Christian and pagan, order and chaos…
The traditions of these people linked to Carnival or other festive periods include a ritual that allows the connection and communication with the supernatural, but also the reconciliation of elements of a community. This practice solves conflicts and strengthens ties. In fact, it turns out to be sort of a moraliser of a community.
The Masks in History
In Greek comedy, the masks were used as a prop. They obviously had the purpose of transforming someone’s identity but also of amplifying their voice in big open-air auditoriums where the performances took place.
The masks also protected the immoral behaviours in feasts of praise to Saturn in ancient Rome, which marked the end of winter and the beginning of the cycle of renewal of nature.
In the medieval times the masks continued being used in the parties and in the theatre plays where the traditional Cantigas de Escárnio e Maldizer (one of the genres of Galician-Portuguese lyric) were recited and aimed at satirising, causing laughter and lastly, at moralising.
During the Ancien Régime, despite being forbidden among the lower classes in some periods, the masks were used in parties of the nobility, where people took advantage of the anonymity to break the social rules.
The symbolic use of the masks connected to rituals of very religious and simultaneously superstitious rural communities was strongly censored over time, since its behaviour compromised the instituted powers, whether they were political or religious.
In Portugal, despite the vicissitudes of the 20th century marked by their prohibition on behalf of the Church and of the Estado Novo (nationalist corporatist authoritarian regime installed in Portugal from 1933 to 1974) and by the dispersion of these communities due to rural flight and emigration, the mask festivities resisted and were even empowered after the revolution of the 25th of April.
A masked man is imbued with a power that provokes, satirises, harasses, breaks the rules, inverts values. The mask confers on him sacredness but also impunity. The more repressed the community, the more violent the masked ones become.
Therefore, with time, there has been a gradual easing of the masked ones. Nowadays, the groups that come together seek above all to have fun and not let the tradition die. The show surpasses the ritual.
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