Kavala Fresk Feastival

Founded in 2012 by the company Mariventos around the traditional street cry used to sell mackerel, oli kavala fresk, this Mindelo festival has grown into one of Cabo Verde's largest gastronomic and cultural events, reaching a fourteenth edition with over fourteen hours of continuous programming. It is the only major Cape Verdean festival tied to a fixed ecological date, always held the last Saturday before July 15, marking the start of the annual fishing closure season.

Kavala Fresk began with a joke rooted in real economic history: mackerel, kavala in Cabo Verdean Creole, was long considered food of the poor even as it remained nutritionally valuable and cheap, and a group of Mindelo friends built an entire festival around the traditional street cry used by fish vendors to sell it, oli kavala fresk, come buy fresh mackerel.