Flower parades featuring elaborate floats decorated with flowers became popular in Europe in the early 20th century. The fishing town of Laredo, situated on the Cantabrian coast of Spain, hosted its first flower parade in 1908. That summer, representatives from three Cantabrian port towns (Colindres, Laredo, and Santoña) met with King Alfonso XII in Santoña to express their concerns about large trawling ships impacting the livelihoods of smaller fishermen in the area. To mark the occasion, members of the fishermen’s guild decorated their rowboats (traineras) with flowers, garlands, and Spanish flags, and organized in a regatta in the bay on August 30, 1908. The event drew a large crowd, partly thanks to the king’s presence, and was declared a success.
Around the same time, the sandy beaches of northern Spain became fashionable among the aristocracy and bourgeoisie, who spent their summers there. This prompted the local government of Laredo to make the parade an annual tradition to draw even more tourists. The organizers decided to move the parade from the bay to the ground, replacing the decorated rowboats with flower-adorned carriages—the forerunners of today’s parade floats. After the parade, a panel of judges selected the winning floats.
The parade was held every year, attracting participants and visitors from all over the area, until the breakout of the Spanish Civil War in 1936. Once the war ended, the festival was revived with slight changes; for example, the competition was restricted to residents of Laredo. For the first decade or so after the war, it was a much less spectacular event than it used to be due to post-war hardships but eventually the residents of Laredo restored the Battle of Flowers to its full glory.
The present-day Battle of Flowers is a parade of allegorical floats adorned with fresh flowers and petals. Although the event itself lasts for a single day, it takes months to prepare the floats because most of the flowers used for decoration are grown and collected locally. Designers known as carrocistas usually spend the whole summer designing and constructing the floats and decorate them with fresh flowers the night before the parade. There are rules specifying that at least three quarters of a float’s surface area must be covered exclusively with real flowers. It can take up to 100,000 flowers to decorate some floats.
The Battle of Flowers is usually held on the last Friday of August, marking the end of the tourist season. In the morning and afternoon, the floats are displayed to the public to give spectators a chance to take a closer look at the flower arrangements. The parade itself begins at 5:30 pm; the floats make their way through the town, drawing a large crowd. After the parade a panel of judges chooses the best float and awards all participating floats with cash prizes.
The festivities also include live musical performances in the streets of Laredo, numerous small markets, and a spectacular fireworks display over the bay.
Photo: M a n u e l
