Pernik is ready for the noisiest and most colorful winter festival in Europe - ‎‎Surva

Bulgaria's town of Pernik is situated only 35 km southwest of Sofia and everyone knows it as the "town of ‎black gold" or "the town of miners". In recent years, however, the appearance of ‎Pernik has been changing and we increasingly associate the town with its noisy, ‎colorful and multifaceted festival "Surva", which took its name from an ancient ‎folk tradition of chasing away winter with a lot of noise and scary animal ‎masks.

Since time immemorial, in the first and coldest month of the New Year, ‎men in this part of Bulgaria have paraded in the streets masked in scary costumes known as mummers (called in Bulgarian ‎"kukeri, survakari, babugeri"), with heavy clappers on their waists, whose ritual ‎procession has the important role of driving away devils and starting life from scratch in the new year.‎

This ritual has been preserved to this day and is gaining even wider popularity, as the ‎former mining town has become a gathering point for all survakari, kukeri, ‎babugeri and jamal groups from all over the country, where a similar ‎masquerade tradition has been preserved.‎

We are just a few hours away from the start of the 31st edition of the Surva Festival in Pernik. This ‎is the largest winter festival in Europe, which is turning the Bulgarian town ‎into a European winter carnival capital, say the organizers from the ‎Municipality of Pernik. It is remarkable that the number of participants in the ‎masquerade procession is growing every year.

This year, over 12 thousand participants are ‎expected, including 20 foreign groups from Western Europe and ‎the Balkans. All of them are part of the program of the International Festival of ‎Masquerade Games "Surva".‎

The masquerade parades start on Friday, January 24, and will continue on ‎Saturday and Sunday, January 25 and 26, so that everyone can show the ‎tradition of their region to the audience.

"This allows us to gather all those who ‎wish to participate from the country and not to turn anyone away. And this ‎year, there is a record number of children among the participants – nearly 2 ‎thousand. This shows that the tradition is not only preserved, but also ‎continues to develop", says Adrian Skrimov from the Municipality of Pernik:‎

‎"Of course, the festival is developing. And this year, anyone who would like ‎to, but cannot be with us, can watch the festival through our online platform ‎‎/Surva.org/, through our Facebook page, and for the people of Pernik, the local ‎television will broadcast the carnival procession live. "Surva" cannot do ‎without its thousands of participants and bearers of the tradition. It is joyful ‎that they are becoming more and more numerous and this year 10 new ‎Bulgarian groups are coming. They either participated in the parades more than ‎‎30 years ago, or did not participate at all, because they are newly created. And ‎this year, groups are coming from Italy, Spain, Portugal, North Macedonia, ‎Serbia, Romania, Greece and, of course, our friends from Slovenia. They are ‎the favorites of the audience."‎

As people from the villages near Pernik say, masquerade games have been here ‎since time immemorial. The first organized Surva festival was held in 1966 ‎and had a modest 800 participants from today's point of view, the ‎municipality of Pernik recalls. Initially, it was held at different times of the year ‎‎- every 4 years or every 2 years, but since 2008 it has become an annual event.‎

Everything in the festival is authentic and is based on the ancient tradition of ‎surva in the Pernik region. And the cold in January is one of the advantages of ‎‎Surva, as the local surva performers say.

"This is exactly the bear-hunting ‎weather that everyone in Pernik relies on to put on the heavy costumes made of ‎wool and animal skins," explains Adrian Skrimov. International guests are ‎already arriving to show their traditions and colour:‎

‎"We strive for the groups to be different every year, so that the people of ‎Pernik and the guests of the festival can see different traditions and different ‎ways of masking. We have interesting masquerade groups from North ‎Macedonia, and very impressive are the traditions of the Italians, which are very ‎close to ours. The rhythm of their movements is different, but in appearance ‎they very much resemble our survakari and kukeri. And so do the Portuguese, ‎who are also very close to the Bulgarian way of masking."

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"This year, the opening of the festival on Friday will feature more than 250 ‎dancers, acrobats, fire jugglers, singers, musicians, as well as kukeri, ‎babugeri and many other characters," reveals Adrian ‎Skrimov and adds that it is the opening of "Surva" that brings him the greatest ‎excitement and joy, as a person from the audience:‎

"Every year the festival has a different vision and we try to make it different every time, but the motto of these masquerade games remains unchanged, and it is "Rejoice during Surva". This is also the invitation - so come to Pernik on January 24, 25 and 26, so that we can all rejoice and have fun together at this most colorful, noisiest and largest carnival in our country, and in Europe!"

You can see more photos from earlier editions of the festival in the gallery below.

Photos: surva.org, BGNES

English publication: Rositsa Petkova