Fiestas Palmares

With disputed origins ranging from an early-1800s founding to a modest 1950s farmers' gathering, Palmares' January festival has grown into a twelve-day mega-turno drawing more than a million visitors to this Alajuela province town. It retains the civic and fundraising DNA of Costa Rica's neighbourhood turno tradition even at national scale, combining bullfighting-adjacent events, concerts, dance and revelry.

Accounts of Fiestas Palmares' origins diverge sharply: some describe a modest farmers' celebration beginning in the 1950s, while others trace observance back to the town's founding by Spanish settlers in the early 1800s, with a first festival reportedly held in 1810 and continuing annually since; a 1998 newspaper archive instead describes a three-day civic celebration already around forty years old at that point, with bulls already central and transported by road from Puntarenas, suggesting the modern bull-centred format was well established by the 1950s regardless of which founding date is most accurate.