Bielsa is a village of a few hundred people at the head of an Aragonese Pyrenean valley, and its carnival is one of the oldest surviving forms in Spain — pre-Christian in character and never really interrupted. The trangas are young men in sheepskins and goat horns, faces blackened with soot and oil, carrying staffs and cowbells; the madamas are young women in white with flowered headdresses; and the whole village processes through the snow to a bonfire.
No attendance figure is published, and the village could not absorb a large one.
The days before Ash Wednesday move with Easter. The practical constraint is altitude and season: this is a high valley in February, the road from Aínsa is the only approach, and both the weather and the limited beds mean visitors book a year ahead or stay down the valley.
PlanningEaster-linked, in a high Pyrenean valley where February access depends on the road being open.