Who the Caretos are
A Careto is a young man of the village transformed, for a few days, into something between a devil, an animal and a force of pure chaos. The transformation is total. Under the mask and the suit the identity is meant to be hidden, and that anonymity is the licence for everything that follows. A Careto can chase, tease, shout and clatter in a way the same person never would with his face uncovered, and the village accepts it because for these few days he is not himself.
In the strongest tradition, that of Podence, the role is reserved for the men, and the costumes are handed down or made fresh each year by the families who keep the custom alive.
What unites them across the villages is the look and the noise. The fringed wool suit, the rigid mask and the belt heavy with cowbells are the constants, though the details shift from place to place. The Caretos move in packs rather than alone, and a great part of the spectacle is the way they coordinate: a dozen or twenty of them flooding a narrow street at once, the bells building to a roar, then peeling off to corner an onlooker or pour into a doorway. They are not actors performing a script.
They are villagers enacting a role their fathers and grandfathers held, and that continuity is exactly what makes watching them feel less like a folklore show and more like stepping into something genuinely old.
The masks, the suits and the bells
The costume is the heart of the whole thing, and it rewards a close look once the running stops. The mask is the signature element, traditionally beaten brass or tin, leather, or carved and painted wood, fixed in a fierce grin with a long nose or horns. In Podence the masks tend toward a reddish, demonic face; in Lazarim they are carved wood, often with horns and bared teeth, and the local mask-carvers are artists in their own right whose work is collected and exhibited. No two masks are quite identical, and villagers can often tell who is behind one by the carving alone.
Below the mask comes the suit, a thick patchwork of woollen fringes in bold reds, greens, yellows and blacks, dense enough that the figure seems to ripple as it moves. Around the waist hangs the chocalho, the belt of cowbells and cattle bells whose deep, irregular clanging announces the Caretos long before they appear. The bells are not decoration; they are the instrument. When a pack of Caretos runs and leaps in unison, the combined crash of dozens of bells is genuinely loud, a physical sound you feel as much as hear.
The colours, the grinning masks and that wall of noise together are the point: this is a deliberate, overwhelming assault on the quiet of a small winter village.
The mischief and its old roots
On the surface, the Caretos are about misrule. They chase people, especially unmarried young women, bumping the heavy cowbells against them in a teasing, suggestive ritual that is loud and physical but, by long custom, good-natured. They demand sweets and chourico from doorways, overturn the ordinary order of the village, and create a few days where the usual rules are suspended. This is the spirit of Carnival the world over, the brief licensed chaos before the long restraint of Lent, but in these villages it has kept a rawer, older edge than the parades of the big cities.
Beneath the fun lie roots that are clearly pre-Christian. Folklorists read the Caretos as a survival of ancient winter and fertility rites: the noise and the bells to wake the sleeping earth and drive out winter, the chasing of young women as a frank fertility gesture, the masked figures as spirits crossing briefly into the human world at the turn of the year. The Church later folded the whole thing into the Carnival calendar before Lent, but the bones of the ritual are older than that frame.
You do not need to decode the symbolism to enjoy the spectacle, but knowing the chase is a fertility rite and the bells are meant to wake the fields changes how you watch it.
It helps to see the masking itself as the key. All over the world, the moment a person puts on a mask is the moment ordinary rules loosen, and these villages have kept that ancient logic intact long after the cities turned Carnival into a tidy parade. The Careto is not pretending to be a monster for laughs; for the length of the festival he genuinely steps outside his normal self, and the village agrees to treat him that way. That collective agreement, sustained year after year by the same families, is the real heritage here.
The masks and bells are the visible part, but the deeper thing being handed down is the shared willingness of a whole community to suspend the everyday and let the old chaos back in for a few cold days.
Podence, the UNESCO village
Podence is a small village in the municipality of Macedo de Cavaleiros, deep in Tras-os-Montes, and it is the place that carried the Caretos to world attention. In 2019 UNESCO inscribed the winter festivities and Carnival of Podence on its Representative List of Intangible Cultural Heritage, recognition that both honoured the tradition and, inevitably, changed it. The village had been quietly losing population for decades, and the listing brought a surge of visitors, media and pride that has helped keep the custom alive.
There is now a small Casa do Careto interpretation centre in the village explaining the masks and the ritual, which is a useful first stop if you arrive before the action begins.
On the key days, Carnival Sunday and Shrove Tuesday above all, the Caretos take over Podence completely. They gather, they run the streets in packs, they chase and clatter through the afternoon, and the day builds toward communal moments shared with the crowd. Because Podence is now the most famous of these celebrations, it is also the busiest, and on Shrove Tuesday the small village can be crowded with day-trippers and photographers. That is the trade-off of fame.
You will see the tradition at its most vivid and best-supported, but you will share it with a lot of other people, so arrive early, park on the edge and walk in, and be patient with the crowds.
Lazarim and the other villages
Podence is the headline, but it is not the only place to meet the Caretos, and some travellers prefer the alternatives precisely because they are less known. Lazarim, a village in the Beira interior near Lamego, holds one of the most striking Carnivals in the country, famous above all for its carved wooden masks. The Lazarim mask-carvers produce horned, grimacing devil masks of real artistry, and the celebration there includes a satirical reading of mock testaments and the ceremonial burning of effigies, a darker and more theatrical strand of the same midwinter impulse. It rewards anyone who wants the tradition without the full Podence crowds.
Beyond these two, masked Carnival figures appear in a scatter of villages across the northeastern interior, each with its own local name, mask style and customs, from the diabos and chocalheiros of nearby parishes to other Tras-os-Montes celebrations that rarely make the guidebooks. Chasing these smaller, lesser-known festivities is the connoisseur's version of the trip, and it pairs naturally with the wider unique experiences in Portugal that lie off the standard coastal route. If you have a car and a flexible few days around Carnival, you can string several villages together, though you should accept that the smallest ones publish their dates and details only locally.
When Carnival happens and how to time it
The Caretos belong to Carnival, the entrudo, which is a moveable feast tied to the date of Easter. In practice the main days fall in February or early March, peaking on the Sunday, Monday and Shrove Tuesday immediately before Ash Wednesday, when Lent begins. Because the date shifts each year, the single most important piece of planning is to check the calendar for the year you intend to travel; a trip that is perfectly timed one February will miss the festivities entirely the next.
The villages and their municipalities publish detailed programmes a few weeks ahead, and these are worth hunting down because the schedule of runs and rituals varies by village.
Shrove Tuesday is the climax almost everywhere, but the surrounding days have their own, often quieter charm. Some travellers prefer Carnival Sunday in Podence, when the village is busy but the atmosphere is at its most festive, while others seek out the run-up days when there are fewer outsiders and the Caretos move through an almost normal village. Whichever day you choose, plan around the fact that this is deep winter in the Portuguese interior. It can be genuinely cold, with frost and the occasional chance of snow on the high ground, so this is not the soft, sunny Portugal of the southern coast.
Pack for an upland February, not a beach holiday.
How to get to the Caretos villages
There is no soft way to say it: Tras-os-Montes is remote, and reaching the Caretos villages takes effort, which is part of why the tradition survived so intact. Podence sits in the far northeast, a long drive inland from the coast, and the realistic way to reach it is by car. Most visitors base themselves in a larger town or city and drive out for the day. The historic cities of the north, Braga and Guimaraes, make comfortable bases with good food and hotels, though they are still a substantial drive from Podence, while Vila Real sits closer to the heart of Tras-os-Montes and shortens the final leg considerably.
Public transport into these villages on Carnival days is thin to nonexistent, so a hire car gives you by far the most freedom, especially if you want to combine several villages or leave when the crowds peak rather than when a bus happens to run. Drive carefully: these are mountain roads, it is winter, and frost or fog is common in the early morning and after dark. Fill the tank before you head into the interior, because services thin out fast once you leave the main towns.
The reward for the effort is a festival that has not been smoothed down for easy access, witnessed in the actual villages where it belongs.
Plan your day around parking and crowds rather than around a precise timetable. On the busy days, the villages fill quickly and the few approaches can clog, so the sensible move is to arrive well before the main run, leave the car on the edge of the village, and walk in on foot. Give yourself buffer time on either side: the mountain roads are slow, the light fades early in winter, and you do not want to be hurrying back down a frosty pass in the dark.
If you are stringing several villages together over a few days, build in a rest day, because standing outdoors in the cold and driving long distances between celebrations is genuinely tiring, and the festival rewards energy and patience more than a packed schedule.
How to witness it respectfully
The most important thing to hold onto is that this is not a show put on for tourists. It is a living village ritual that outsiders are welcome to witness, and the distinction matters in how you behave. Expect to be chased, bumped with cowbells and teased if you stand at the front; that is the game, and the right response is to laugh and play along, not to recoil or push back. Keep a sense of humour, accept that you may end up part of the spectacle, and remember that the good-natured roughness is the tradition working exactly as intended.
Reacting badly to a Careto's attention misses the entire point.
Be a considerate guest in a small community. Ask before taking close portraits of unmasked villagers, do not block the Caretos' run for the sake of a photo, give way when a pack comes through, and support the village by buying food and drink locally and visiting the interpretation centres that help fund the tradition. These are not wealthy places, and respectful, paying visitors are part of what keeps the custom viable. Bring cash, dress warmly, arrive early, and treat the day with the same courtesy you would want extended to a festival in your own home town.
Do that, and you will be welcomed into one of the most vivid and least diluted folk traditions left in Europe.
Fitting the Caretos into a northern Portugal trip
A Carnival trip to the Caretos works best when you treat it as the wild, remote highlight of a wider loop through the north rather than a destination in itself. Few people fly in solely for a single afternoon in Podence. Far more rewarding is to build a week around it: a couple of days in Braga and Guimaraes for the cathedrals, the baroque churches and the birthplace of the nation, the long scenic drive east into Vila Real and the Douro highlands, and then the Carnival days themselves in the deep interior.
The contrast between the polished historic cities and the raw village ritual is the whole texture of the trip.
It also slots neatly alongside the other off-the-beaten-path experiences that reward travellers willing to leave the coast. The same instinct that draws you to a masked village Carnival in February is the one that finds Portugal's most unique experiences in its interior: the wine villages, the upland festivals, the food traditions that never made it onto the postcards. The Caretos are the most spectacular of these, a genuine survival of something ancient still performed by the people whose ancestors invented it. See them once, in the actual village, in the actual cold, and they tend to recalibrate what you think a Portuguese holiday can be.
Why it matters
Why it matters: the Caretos are one of the most intact pre-Christian folk traditions surviving anywhere in western Europe, and they show a side of Portugal that the beaches and the cities never reveal. The UNESCO listing of Podence in 2019 confirmed what the villagers always knew, that this masked midwinter ritual is a piece of living heritage worth protecting. For a traveller, witnessing it means leaving the comfortable coast for the cold, remote interior of Tras-os-Montes and being briefly absorbed into a chase that has been running for centuries. It is noisy, strange, slightly unsettling and completely real, and that authenticity is exactly the point.
Practical tips
- Check the Carnival dates for your travel year first; the entrudo is a moveable feast in February or early March, and the villages publish detailed programmes only a few weeks ahead.
- Base yourself in Braga, Guimaraes or Vila Real and drive out, since Podence and the other villages are remote and public transport on Carnival days is effectively nonexistent.
- Dress for a cold upland winter, not a beach: frost, fog and the occasional chance of snow are normal in the interior, and you will be standing outdoors for hours.
- Expect to be chased and bumped with cowbells if you stand at the front, and play along; the good-natured roughness is the tradition working as intended, not aggression.
- Bring cash, ask before photographing unmasked villagers, do not block the run for a photo, and support the village by buying food locally and visiting the interpretation centre.
Local insight
Local insight: my rule for the Caretos is to give up on the perfect photograph and just be in it. The first year I spent the afternoon backing away to frame shots and came home with decent pictures and almost no memory of how it felt. The second year I put the phone in my pocket, stood where the Caretos ran, got chased and bell-bumped along with everyone else, and that is the day I actually remember. These villages are tiny and the run is fast and physical.
Watch it through a screen and you will miss the noise, the cold air and the genuine jolt of a masked figure coming straight at you.
Useful official sources
For details that may change, transport, weather, opening hours, verify with these official sources.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the Caretos of northern Portugal?
They are masked, fringe-suited Carnival figures from the Tras-os-Montes region in the remote northeast of Portugal. During the entrudo, the Portuguese Carnival, young men of the village put on rigid masks of brass, leather or carved wood and rough wool suits fringed in red, green and yellow, then run through the streets in packs, rattling belts of cowbells and chasing onlookers. Beneath the mischief lie old pre-Christian roots as a rite of fertility and the driving out of winter. The most famous appear at Podence, UNESCO listed since 2019, and at Lazarim near Lamego.
Where can I see the Caretos?
The most famous and best-supported celebration is at Podence, a small village in the municipality of Macedo de Cavaleiros in Tras-os-Montes, which UNESCO inscribed on its Intangible Cultural Heritage list in 2019. The second great one is at Lazarim, near Lamego, known for its carved wooden devil masks and its satirical mock-testament and effigy-burning rituals. Beyond these two, masked Carnival figures appear in a scatter of smaller villages across the northeastern interior, each with its own local mask style and customs. Podence is the most accessible and vivid; the smaller villages reward travellers who want fewer crowds.
When does the Caretos Carnival take place?
It happens at Carnival, the entrudo, which is a moveable feast tied to the date of Easter, so it falls in February or early March depending on the year. The main days are the Sunday, Monday and Shrove Tuesday immediately before Ash Wednesday, when Lent begins, with Shrove Tuesday usually the climax. Because the date shifts annually, the single most important thing to plan is to check the calendar for your travel year, since a trip timed perfectly one February will miss the festivities entirely the next. The villages publish detailed programmes a few weeks beforehand.
What do the Caretos costumes mean?
The costume is built to overwhelm and to disguise. The brass, leather or carved-wood mask hides the wearer's identity, which gives him the licence to chase and tease in a way he never would with his face uncovered. The thick wool fringes in red, green, yellow and black make the figure ripple and stand out, and the belt of cowbells produces the deep, irregular roar that announces the pack. Folklorists read the whole ensemble as a survival of ancient winter and fertility rites, the noise meant to wake the sleeping earth and drive out winter, the masked figures standing in for spirits crossing into the human world.
Is it safe and appropriate for tourists to attend?
Yes, visitors are genuinely welcome, provided you understand it is a living village ritual rather than a show staged for tourists. Expect to be chased, bumped with cowbells and teased if you stand near the front; this is the game, and the right response is to laugh and play along. Be a considerate guest in a small community: ask before photographing unmasked villagers, do not block the Caretos' run for a photo, give way when a pack comes through, and support the village by buying food and drink locally. Treat it with the courtesy you would want extended to a festival in your own town.
How do I get to Podence and the Caretos villages?
By car, realistically. Tras-os-Montes is remote, and Podence sits in the far northeast, a long drive inland from the coast, so most visitors base themselves in a larger town and drive out for the day. Braga and Guimaraes make comfortable bases with good food and hotels, though they are still a substantial drive away, while Vila Real sits closer to the heart of the region and shortens the final leg. Public transport into the villages on Carnival days is thin to nonexistent, so a hire car gives the most freedom. Drive carefully on cold mountain roads and fill the tank before heading inland.
What should I pack for a Caretos Carnival trip?
Pack for a cold upland winter, because this is the interior of northern Portugal in February, not the sunny southern coast. You can expect frost, fog and the occasional chance of snow on higher ground, and you will be standing outdoors for several hours, so bring warm layers, a waterproof jacket, a hat and gloves, and sturdy shoes for cobbled village streets. Carry cash, since the small villages have few card facilities and you will want to buy food, drink and perhaps a carved mask locally.
A good camera is fine, but be ready to put it away and simply experience the run, which is the part you will actually remember.