San Sebastian Street Festival

Every year in January, the street of San Sebastian in Old San Juan comes alive with the sounds of a carnival. A carnival atmosphere pervades the block as fairground rides, food stalls and live music take over the area. Old San Juan is the only walled city in the Caribbean, founded by the Spanish in 1521 as a stopover en route to Spain for ships carrying gold, silver, slaves, plants and jewels plundered from the newly-colonized Americas. Inside the fortified walls is a maze of narrow cobbled streets lined with brightly painted 17th and 18th-century colonial-era houses.

The folkloric element of the city makes it an ideal place for the San Sebastian Street Festival. It is an extension of the Hatillo Mask Festival, which is celebrated with fun activities for the children and array of delicious Puerto Rican cuisine. During the daytime, the locals form a procession wearing traditional Puerto Rican masks or vejigantes, vibrantly colored in shades of red, yellow and blue, carved into grotesque and comical shapes.

At nighttime, live music provides a party in which traditional and classical Puerto Rican music including the salsa and meringue force old and young alike to the dance floors.