Anjo Festival

Originating in Póvoa de Varzim, it is currently observed in several towns,[1] especially Vila do Conde and Esposende.

The festival consists of a family picnic in the surrounding countryside or woodlands, known in the local dialect as Bouças.

[1] The festival was popularized in the Ivy Festival of the 1920s, as a reminder of pagan culture and beliefs, which started from the traditional walk of the inhabitants of Póvoa de Varzim to Anjo woodlands (Bouças do Anjo), the name of the parish of Argivai (Parish of Saint Michael, the Angel).

[2] Girls, in the 1920s, in order to finance a local brass band used the traditional walk to the Anjo and placed themselves in the entrance of the woodlands where families had their picnic, selling ivy leaves to couples and singing ivy poems which led the couples to buy them, young men would put the ivy in their hats or pockets and girls would place them in their chests.

[2] Ivy poems: The ivy is a very common plant in Póvoa de Varzim, often found in granite walls that divide farmlands and, on Easter Sunday, with the arrival of Spring, they become symbolic and interweaved with Christian beliefs: the population picks ivy leaves and spreads them in the streets, especially near one's door or forming corridors meant to be stepped on by the compasso pascal, a Catholic parade that brings the Lord in the Crucifix into one's home.