The tradition of the Maios is back in Aldeia de Santa Rita (Vila Real de Santo António), on the Labor Day holiday.
The initiative is developed in collaboration with the local population and can be visited throughout the day, in the streets of the locality, allowing to revive this old festive tradition so characteristic in the region.
In the Algarve, in many places, it is customary, on the 1st of May, to create the Maios or Maias, decorate them and place them on the street. These are dolls and dolls representing people, life-size, stuffed with straw, rags, crumpled newspapers and dressed in used clothes.
They are made by the populations with simplicity and improvisation, commonly accompanied by reproductions of animals, objects of common use, staging daily activities, with sayings about it in prose or verse.
Puppets or living characters such as the Mayans (now less frequent) are reminiscences of archaic customs linked to the end of winter and the outbreak of spring that signaled the renewal of nature and symbolized the fecundating power of blooming vegetation.
Also this year, Associação Santa Rita, A Nossa Aldeia organizes a Fair of Crafts and Regional Products, between 10:00 and 18:00, bringing even more entertainment.
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