Cascaronazos Weekend in San Miguel (Egg Warfare Returns!)

More popularly known as Cascaronazos in San Miguel, this is a day you need to stay “heads up!”  According to tradition, eggs which have been hollowed out and filled with confetti are broken on the heads of friends and love interests.  Nowadays daring youngsters even break raw eggs on the heads of their friends. Stroll the Jardin, or for the less daring, watch it all happen in this video.

Carnaval is a raucous holiday meant to ring in the solemn days of Lent, but here in the relatively conservative town of San Miguel, it generally does not include the more bawdy celebrations found in Carnaval celebrations in other parts of Mexico and Latin America.

It is a tradition that the weekend of carnival in San Miguel de Allende, families gather in the Main Garden to break their shells.

Mrs. Martina Cruz, who is a shell merchant, is already preparing them for sale, decorating and making other figures such as little clowns and flowers: it is a family tradition, she comments. These eggshells are painted with aniline mixed with hot water and a little alcohol, then filled with confetti and bits of metallic paper, and covered with Chinese paper.

This year, the sanmiguelense tradition will begin on Saturday, February 26 to conclude on the Tuesday before the beginning of Lent.

More info […]

The ‘Carnival’ will be in the Main Garden during Sunday, February 27, Monday, March 28 and Tuesday, March 1, with activities throughout the day.

The ‘Carnival’ is rooted among the Sanmiguelenses themselves as “The Day of the Cascaronazos”, since children and young people come, some with colorful masks, to the historic center and specifically in the Main Square, to smash egg shells, stuffed with “gold dust”, silver, with flour and confetti; some shells are scented with “flowery water” which is an original fragrance of some San Miguel artisans.

In addition, this event is the perfect pretext for the meeting of couples, since it is customary for young people to give gardenias or one of these handmade flowers to the woman they intend to court or simply reinforce their friendship.

For this tradition, the sale of these shells, “egg clowns” and handmade crepe paper flowers are made, made by local families who have kept this custom alive from generation to generation.