The tradition of Maios will return, on the Labor Day holiday (May 1st), to the village of Santa Rita and the beach of Manta Rota, in the municipality of Vila Real de Santo António.
In Santa Rita, the initiative is organized by the Municipality of Vila Real de Santo António, through the Heritage Research and Information Center of Cacela, and by the local population, and can be visited throughout the day, in the streets of the village, allowing revive this ancient festive tradition so characteristic of the region.
Also this year, the association “Santa Rita, A Nossa Aldeia” will organize a Mercadinho dos Maios, between 10 am and 00 pm, bringing even more excitement to the town.
In Manta Rota, the tradition is revived by the association “A Manta” and by Maria Cândida Justo Romano, popularly known as “Candinhas”.
The Maios exhibition can be visited on Dr. Luís Medeiros Antunes, on Estrada da Manta Rota (from the pedestrian area to the old casino/Tourist office) and next to the public bathhouse.
In the Algarve, in many places, it is customary, on the first day of May, to create Maios or Maias, decorate them and put them on the street. These are dolls and dolls representing people, in life size, filled 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.
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