International Student Blog | How London celebrates Festa Junina

How London celebrates Festa Junina

June 21, 2016
Art and Culture Favourite Memories Food London Music Student Experience
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Festa Junina International Student Bloggers

Festa Junina (June’s Feast), also known as “Festa de São João” or “Arraiá”, are annual celebrations taking place during the month of June nationwide both in Brazil and Portugal. It is especially celebrated on the eves of the Catholic solemnities of Saint Anthony (13/06), Saint John the Baptist (24/06), and Saint Peter (29/06).

In Festa Junina, people normally feature traditional costumes, amazing food and dance. Men fancy up as farm boys with straw hats and checked shirts. And women wear pigtails, very colourful dresses, red-cheeks, and freckles. It is insanely colourful and cheerful!

Have I mentioned the delicious food? Oh boy! There are pamonha (which is made of sweetcorn, boiled wrapped in corn husks, and turned into a dumpling), canjica, corn on the cob, pamonha frita (corn cakes) and much more!

And guess what… Festa Junina are happening in London as well!

I went to the one in the Capelania Brasileira of Crystal Palace on the 18th June, and took a picture of these lovely young ladies with traditional outfits.

The live music was lovely! Plenty of forró, which is a genre of Brazilian music that made me feel like I was actually in Brazil. 🙂 This music is a kind of tribute to the origins of Brazilian country music.

The typical dancing is well-known as quadrilha, which is similar to square dancing. I would guess that practically all Brazilians have danced quadrilha at least once in their lives. This typical dancing features couple formations around a mock wedding, whose bride and groom are the central attraction of the dancing.

Before the proper dancing, a comic role play may happen as well. It is all around a wedding.

Normally, the actual wedding does not happen at the end. Some possible reasons for that are: the groom already has another family (his wife and children invade the wedding!), the groom is in love with the bride’s sister, the bride is pregnant with someone’s else child, and so forth. Often, the bride’s father wants to kill the groom at the end of the role play (believe me!), and the quadrilha starts in order to stop him from doing it. There was no role play at the Festa Junina in Crystal Palace though. But there were the quadrilha for children and the quadrilha for adults.

I particularly liked this Festa Junina because of the celebration of diversity that I could see there. There were plenty of Brazilians, but there were also people from Spain, Portugal, England and Russia. 🙂

There was also a lot of dancing, music and food, including plenty of Portuguese cuisine. From pastéis (rectangle-shaped thin crust pies with assorted fillings, such as beef, ham and cheese, and then fried in vegetable oil) to tapioca (which is made from starch extracted from cassava root). There were also churros (fried-dough pastry), and delicious churrasco (mixed grill) of pork, chicken and beef. Furthermore, there were pastéis de nata (egg tart pastry) and other Portuguese pastries, which were absolutely delicious!