There is no Santa Cruz de Tenerife Carnival without the mythical gypsy or flamenco costume Many of us have grown up with it, few men can say that throughout their carnival life they have not used it, but: what is its origin? The story is curious.
To find the origin of the gypsy costume in the Santa Cruz de Tenerife Carnival, it is necessary to go back to the late 60s. Even in the midst of the Franco dictatorship, under the name of Winter Festivals, a group of carnival-goers decided to go out in a gypsy costume. , but in broad daylight.
“The NiFu-NiFá It had its headquarters near Plaza Weyler and several of its members, with Enrique González at the head, decided to dress up as a gypsy in order to go to other members’ jobs to ask to be given Monday off,” recalls Zenaido Hernández, expert journalist in the history of our Carnival.
The scene was, to say the least, striking. In 1968, seeing a group of men dressed as gypsies trained in the headquarters of several banks and cafeterias, making noise, caused a sensation: “They made a fuss, they jumped the queue, they told the bosses what it was like to have “People working on Carnival Monday… Crazy.”
Sometimes it worked, so the person liberated, she had to dress as a gypsy to join the group and continue, local by local, carrying out the same mission. “Those were the times of Enrique González, Navarrito or Nicolás Mingorance, people very much from our Carnival,” says Zenaido.
As the years went by, other murgas joined this tradition: “The Mamelukes came to do it, going out with the gypsy costume on Carnival Monday instead of the fantasy of that year. Los Diablos Locos, for example, too.”
The tradition has been lost in recent years. The gypsy costume continues to be one of the favorites at the Santa Cruz de Tenerife Carnival, but no longer for the reason that the NiFú-NiFá, in such a striking way, made it fashionable.
