With the skies clearing just in time, Newark’s annual Portugal Day Festival is back this weekend, alighting the city’s Ironbound section with the red, yellow and green colors of the Portuguese flag and the music, dancing and cuisine of the seafaring nation.
The three-day festival that began Friday and will last through Sunday night is a celebration of Portuguese culture that has attracted thousands of visitors to Ferry Street and surrounding byways.
But the festival was cancelled in 2020 and 2021 and limited in scope last year due to the coronavirus pandemic, after the Ironbound had been a hot spot for transmission of the virus.
So festival fans welcomed an announcement in March from the Portugal Day Committee that it would be back in full swing this year. Mayor Ras J. Baraka is this year’s grand marshal. Check the festival Facebook page for details or updates.
Just as welcome for the outdoor festival were forecasts that smoke from Canadian wildfires would be all but gone by Saturday, after having caused New Jersey’s worst air quality in decades.
The festival was created in 1979 by the Bernardino Coutinho Foundation, named for its founder, a businessman and civic leader who immigrated to New Jersey from Portugal, a nation of just over 10 million people along the Atlantic Ocean that shares the Iberian Peninsula with Spain in Europe’s southwest corner.
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Steve Strunsky may be reached at sstrunsky@njadvancemedia.com
