It’s hard to imagine right now with all the social distancing, but just six short weeks ago I was squeezed shoulder to shoulder with glitter-covered people of all ages, sipping sangria and swaying to samba music. This was an innocent time, when the supply of confetti was more of a concern for Spain than face masks or hand sanitizer.

During my Barcelona trip, my friend Ana and I took a day trip to Sitges for Carnaval. Countries all over the world celebrate Carnaval as a final celebration to let loose before Lent, and Sitges has one of the biggest celebrations in Europe. And being one of Spain’s gay capitals, the celebration naturally has a gay-pride focus. The fact that it’s February doesn’t stop the little beach town from throwing a wild week-long festival.

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The junior parade

We went on Tuesday, the second-to-last day of Carnaval. An adorable junior parade took place at 3:00 p.m., featuring dancing children and teenagers in impressively matched and elaborate costumes. In the late afternoon, we wandered the picturesque streets of Sitges.

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It’s a beautiful town! There’s this castle-like church on the edge of the sea, a crescent-shaped beach, whitewashed buildings, and colorful little alleyways fringed with palm fronds. I adored Sitges. It was exactly how I imagined a Spanish town sitting on the Mediterannean. We collected shells on the edge of the water and when it got too windy and cold in the evening we stopped in a pizza place for dinner.

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The Sitges Carnaval By Night

By dark the town became a lot crazier. There was a crush of costumed people in the streets, including parade-participants mingling with the crowd before heading to their floats. There were men in elaborate drag and girls in neon wigs and feather boas and people speaking languages from all over the world. Bars blasted music and everyone was dancing and drinking sangria— and I mean everyone.

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Here’s one of the amazing things about Spain: you can find a large carton or bottle of sangria for a little over a euro. It’s unbelievably cheap! So in Sitges, everywhere you looked, people were holding these cartons of sangria and sipping from straws. We saw cartons upon cartons of empty sangria in literal heaps on the sidewalk along buildings and spilling out of trashcans. I’ve never seen anything like it. At one point a magnanimous girl passing by added to our supply by giving us one of her extra unopened cartons.

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Churros + Discarded Sangria

We eventually found a spot to stand for the parade, near the beginning of the route. We ate piping hot churros, sipped our sangria, and leaned over the railing waiting for the parade to start and watching people across the way.

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Inside a Sitges bar and out on the Sitges streets

The parade itself was epic, like nothing I’d ever experienced before. It was an explosion of sequins, feathers, strutting, camp, and dancing. It was hilarious and well done and amazing, all at once. One person handed out popsicles from a giant cooler, one guy bestowed kisses on the audience; the elaborate floats featured minibars for the parade dancers and music blasting from speakers. Most people in the parade weren’t professional dancers, so it was fun to see people of all ages come together like that to have a good time and put on a show.

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The procession lasted for hours. And the crazy thing is that once we finally saw the end, around midnight, it would still last several more hours afterward as it snaked its way through the town.

After the parade we went dancing, floating from bar to bar and running around the electric streets, which were humming with the tipsy, the strutting, the shimmering, the shimmying, the delighted. A little after 2 a.m. we took a 45 minute bus back to Barcelona and ended the night by making the best pesto pasta I have ever had in my life.

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The Carnaval in Sitges was my favorite day out of the whole Barcelona trip. And it’s fun to think back on right now, at a time when neighbors talk to each other from the safety of separate balconies and the prospect of a town overflowing with festivalgoers is unthinkable. For now I’m happy reminiscing, and I look forward to the day when dancing in the streets becomes normal once again.