| 2017 date | January 28 |
|---|---|
| 2018 date | January 27 |
| 2019 date | January 26 |
Wowww ya'll this is happening today! What a fun event to witness. I sure wish I was there to see it but if your like me and your stuck having to work.... here's a bit of information on what we are missing out on. Maybe next year right.
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The Gasparilla Pirate Festival is a large parade and a host of related community events celebrated almost every year since 1904 in Tampa, Florida. It is held in late January and hosted by Ye Mystic Krewe of Gasparilla and the City of Tampa, and it celebrates the apocryphal legend of José Gaspar (also known as Gasparilla), a mythical Spanish pirate who supposedly operated in Southwest Florida in the early 1800s. As of the 100th edition in 2015, the parade was the 3rd largest in the United States and had an economic impact of $23 million on Tampa's economy.
Tampa's Gasparilla Season runs from January to March and features three large parades. The focal point of the season is the Parade of Pirates, which features a friendly invasion by Ye Mystic Krewe of Gasparilla and a large parade along Bayshore Boulevard into downtown. The Parade of Pirates, which is held on the last Saturday in January, is often referred to as the Gasparilla Parade by locals. Other major parades during the Gasparilla season are the Gasparilla Children's Parade, which is also held on Bayshore Boulevard and downtown one week before the main parade, and the Sant'Yago Illuminated Knight Parade, which is organized by the Krewe of the Knights of Sant'Yago in the historic neighborhood of Ybor City two weeks after the main parade.
Tampa hosts many other Gasparilla-related or named events during its Gasparilla season, including the Gasparilla Film Festival, the Gasparilla Festival of the Arts, the Gasparilla Distance Classic, and the Gasparilla Music Festival, with a changing lineup of smaller events held year to year. The Gasparilla Parade of Pirates once coincided with the Florida State Fair, which was held at Plant Field at the end of the traditional parade route in downtown Tampa. The close connection between the fair and Gasparilla ended in the mid-1970s, when the fair moved to a much larger location east of Tampa.
The first Gasparilla parade
was held in May 1904, after Tampa Tribune society editor Miss Louise Frances Dodge and Tampa's director of customs George Hardee combined the legend of the dashing pirate with elements of a New Orleans Mardi Gras / Carnival festival to give Tampa's relatively sedate May Day celebration a new theme with local connections. The first "invasion" was via horseback, with the first sea-based invasion coming in 1911.
The Gasparilla parade was moved from May to February when it restarted following a lapse during World War I. This schedule coincided with the Florida State Fair, which was held at sprawling Plant Field near downtown Tampa. The events merged, and for decades, the parade route ended at the fair grounds, drawing many thousands of spectators to the combined festivities. Since the Florida State Fair moved to more spacious quarters east of Tampa in 1976, the parade route has varied slightly from year to year. It usually begins or ends in downtown and includes a long stretch along Bayshore Boulevard. The Gasparilla festivities were cancelled during World War II and resumed in 1946. With one exception in 1991 (see section below), it has been held every year since.
The Gasparilla parade was usually held on the second Monday of February in the decades following World War II. It was an official holiday in Tampa, with local schools and government offices closed for the day along with some businesses. In 1988, the Parade of Pirates was moved to the first Saturday in February to make it easier for residents of other communities to take part in the festivities. Since 2005, the event has been held on the last Saturday of January.
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