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‘Well, Cadiz at Carnival,’ smiles the man at the next table in the café on Zorilla Street, ‘you know you have come to our city when we are all going mad? Don’t anticipate to sleep tonight. But please anticipate to enjoy so much fun!’

So much fun is exactly what it’s all about in the ancient Andalucian port city of Cadiz when Carnival comes round. I have often heard of the noisy late winter frolics here, of the riotously costumed groups of murgas or singers who tour the narrow streets packed onto floats, dealing out insults, sarcasm and innuendo in multi-part harmony. No-one is sacrosanct, from double-dealing local officials to the mayor, from national politicians to the Spanish royal family. Every street and lane gets jammed with crowds in the last stages of hilarity, and there’s no point even thinking of going to bed.

I arrived at breakfast time, aiming to have a quick look around while the streets were still negotiable. Cadiz is one of the oldest and most beautiful cities in Spain, a major port for over 3,000 years, a springboard for epic voyages of discovery, a cultural sponge. I wander the tight streets of the 18th-century quarter on its sea-girt peninsula, beside the port where big ships line the quays, through marble-paved squares whose gutters are spattered with brilliant dots of colour from last night’s carnival confetti. In the Plaza de las Flores, Peruvian vendors of cheap sunglasses and leather wristbands are already about, their broad faces upturned in entreaty to passers-by hurrying to work.

As the day advances the city of Cadiz runs ever more slowly, its shopkeepers and café waiters half distracted as they stand dreaming of tonight’s high jinks. It’s not a bad idea to get out of town for a few hours. David Rios of Ornitours has kindly agreed to take me off among the birds in the hills and countryside behind the city - this part of Andalucia is wonderful for birdwatching at this time of year.

We drive out to the lakes near Medina Sidonia, where explosive little scribbles of song from Cetti’s warblers are bursting from the scrub bushes. Soon, says David, there’ll be the annual influx of nightingales, making the woods ring with their beautiful fluting songs. We find the storks already paired and sitting on giant bundle-like nests at the top of telegraph poles and mobile phone masts. Everything in the bird world seems ready for spring and the mating game.

David can see I’m not much of an ornithologist, and he shapes the day accordingly. In the Venta El Soldao at Benalup we eat zurrapa de higado y carne de cerdo– bowls of squashed meat with caps of bright orange pork fat butter, scooped and spread on toast – under bunches of rabbit snares dangling from the ceiling. ‘When I was a boy,’ muses David, ‘people here ate little songbirds for tapas. A poor country and no food, you see.’

Beyond Benalup, a lush country where horses graze chin-deep in grass leads to the abrupt little limestone walls of the Sierra de Los Alcornocales. Here a ladder that would have UK health and safety officials reaching for their closure notices rises up the rock face to a cave covered in 5,000-year-old paintings – a stag with great back-swept horns, a doe with her fawn sheltering under her belly, a clutch of flamingos, and a man with an axe in his hand.

We drive up winding mountain roads and come to Taco de Sancho, a white cliff rearing out of the trees where a dozen griffon vultures are perched on seemingly impossible ledges, their eggs already laid in the nests beside them. As we stare through the telescope and admire their bald heads and plumy neck ruffs, the last rays of the sun strike gold from their feathers and from the rock behind. It’s time to head back from the lonely heights, down towards Cadiz and the night of genial madness that lies ahead.

I walk the breezy alamedas, or gardens, beside the bay and out along a dark causeway to the castle, watching green waves slapping at the medieval stonework in the moonlight. Strange figures are seen scurrying into town – a pair of Chinese women straight off a silk screen, a gang of jolly bakers with floury faces under ten-foot hats. I drift townwards, too, nursing a paper cup of San Miguel bought from one of the long outdoor bars that have sprung up in every laneway. The streets are lit by carnival lamps and lanterns, and I shove my way to a corner under one of these. Confetti rains down from upper windows like psychedelic snow. No possibility of movement from now on – I have got myself wedged in a posse of mountainous ladies out for a good time and my beer has already been upended by a dimpled elbow.

It’s about eleven o’clock when the first of the carnival floats lurches round the corner, its wheels brushing my toes. The float is crammed with 30 youngsters in shiny tuxedos, with centre-parted hair and Ronald Coleman moustaches. Drink and excitement have polished their cheeks. On catching sight of us they lean melodramatically outwards, eyes rolling upwards, hands pressed to hearts. Ten-part harmony envelops the street. ‘You know our beloved Clerk of Public Works?’ they sing. ‘He is one of the biggest jerks. He rips up the sewers and he leaves them to spray. And then he goes to dance the night away, away, awa-a-a-y! …’ And so on, belabouring a politician famous for enjoying himself at the public’s expense.

I catch as much of the meaning of the song as my neighbours care to translate for me – not very much, but this would be a marvellous spectacle even if the murgas were singing in Martian. They bend into the crowd and haul a couple of young women into the float as if landing a pair of fish. At last the tractor coughs out blue smoke, the float lurches into motion, and the singing lounge lizards and their captives fade off down the street. They are replaced by a trailer full of ‘pregnant’ singers – husky young men with hairy arms who fondle their swollen bellies as they sing about Crown Prince Felipe and Princess Letizia and their newborn daughter. ‘Oh, Letizia! Oh, Felipe! You’ll have no worries feeding her or clothing her, you wealthy dad and mother. But oh, Letizia! Oh, Felipe! When are you going to try for another?’

On come the floury bakers (topic: the opening of a fast food joint in town), followed by a convocation of female monsignors in suspenders and high heels (scandals in the presbytery). It’s not exactly Lorca, and the singers will give Placido Domingo no close call, but my neighbours don’t care. Those are their friends and acquaintances up there behind the funny hats and false bosoms, and these are the subjects closest to their everyday lives.

In a shower of straw hats and a rain of gold-wrapped sweeties the floats pass by under the flickering lanterns. It’s a medieval scene, and as I gaze towards the waterfront after a party of singing conquistadores in plastic armour, dazed by the music and bonhomie, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see a file of bearded men in coal scuttle helmets and glinting breastplates come swaggering up to Carnival from the darkened harbour, out of the shadows of the past.

FACT BOX

Tour company: Mundi Color Holidays, 276 Vauxhall Bridge Road, London SW1V 1B6; www.mundicolor.co.uk organise tailor-made holidays to all parts of Spain, including Cadiz.
Ornitour Birdwatching Tours: www.ornitour.com
Cadiz Tourist Office: www.cadizturismo.com.
Spanish Tourist Office: PO Box 4002, London W1A 6NB; 24-hr info and brochure; www.tourspain.co.uk; www.spain.info.

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