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Over 40,000 people attend Bellinzona carnival

Over 40,000 people attend Bellinzona carnival parade
Rabadan, which means "noise" in Piedmont dialect, is considered the biggest and most important carnival in canton Ticino. Keystone-SDA

Over 40,000 people took part in Sunday's carnival procession in Bellinzona in Italian-speaking Switzerland.

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In all, 53 groups and Guggen ensembles took part in the main procession, many of them from German-speaking Switzerland.

A spokesperson for the organising committee told the Keystone-ATS news agency that a “record attendance” had been achieved compared with recent years. Last year, the parade saw lower turn-out due to the bad weather.

On Sunday afternoon, under bright-blue sky and warm temperatures, colourful and noisy groups paraded through the streets of Bellinzona in canton Ticino. They included an eye-catching float of red-and-white planes from Bellinzona, in reference to the possible demise of the Swiss army’s Patrouille Suisse aerial display team.

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Nemo in Bellinzona

Biasca’s “Combricola di Formighin” also mocked last spring’s electoral fraud in Arbedo-Castione, carrying oversized bottles of Tip-Ex in front of them. A large “Eurovision” float featured an all-pink Nemo, who regularly bowed to the audience.

The festivities kicked off in the Ticino capital last Thursday. The spokesperson said around 30,000 visitors were present on the first and second evenings of the carnival. There were no reported incidents.

Rabadan, which means “noise” in Piedmont dialect, is considered the biggest and most important carnival in canton Ticino. The event in Bellinzona is run by the carnival king, who receives the (symbolic) key to the city gates from the town’s president.

Adapted from German by DeepL/sb

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