Carnaval de Mindelo

Descended from the Portuguese Entrudo tradition introduced in the early eighteenth century, Mindelo's carnival grew into a major festival funded by Sao Vicente's coal-trade wealth in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, absorbing British, Brazilian and maritime harbour-town influences along the way. Founding parade groups Florianos, from 1920, and Nacional, from 1939, anchor more than a century of continuous development into what is now widely regarded as Cabo Verde's largest carnival celebration.

Mindelo's carnival descends directly from Entrudo, the Portuguese pre-Lenten festival introduced to Cabo Verde in the early eighteenth century, and while some sources trace its formal beginnings as far back as 1916 as a modest, playful entrudo celebration, the carnival's transformation into a major festival is tied to a specific economic moment: the late nineteenth and early twentieth century coal trade that made Sao Vicente, and Mindelo specifically, the richest and most productive island in the then-Portuguese colony, giving local merchants the wealth to fund genuinely elaborate festivities for the first time.