Rio de Janeiro (EFE).- The Carnival of Rio de Janeiro, which starts this Friday, year after year attracts millions of tourists who delight in the majestic parades of the sambadrome and live a unique experience with the street troupes.
A gigantic gear works throughout the year to give life to the most emblematic party in Brazil, which by 2023 will have a structure never seen before.
Almost a hundred ‘escolas’ parading
The city will have 92 samba companies parading through the two main catwalks set aside for the party and 16 more for children. The sambadrome is reserved for the best, the 15 of the Gold series and the 12 of the Special Group, the cream of the schools. The rest, who belong to lower categories, will parade for free on Intendente Magalhaes avenue.
A sambadrome to burst
The enormous mass of cement where the samba schools are worshiped will have about 100,000 people including the public, dancers and operators, each of the four days of parades.
More than 400 street troupes during the carnival
Of the more than 600 who registered, 402 ‘blocos’ were authorized, as the street groups are known, which this year are bringing joy, brightness and color to different parts of the city, free of charge and almost a month before the carnival.
100% hotel occupancy and economic injection
According to the association of hoteliers in the city, HoteisRío, until the beginning of the week about 96% of the hotel network was reserved for the carnival. The expectation is that it reaches 100% in these last days.
The city expects revenues of 4.5 billion reais (about 870 million dollars), of which only the street troupes will inject some 1.2 billion reais (232 million dollars) into Rio.
Millions of partygoers and vendors everywhere
According to figures from the Mayor’s Office, more than five million partygoers are expected, the vast majority, in the street troupes.
In a matter of street sales, the domain will be of the women who will have 5,650 stalls of the 10,000 authorized for the days of the carnival. The beer will be the most offered in the streets to encourage and ‘hydrate’ the partygoers.
A cleaning battalion and thousands of public toilets
The Municipal Urban Cleaning Company (Comlurb) allocated 5,000 people to keep the city clean during carnival time. Only in the sambadrome and in the Mayor Magalhaes, 240 tons of garbage were collected in the four days of parades in 2021.
The ‘folioes’, as partygoers are called in Brazil, won’t have to put up with the urge to go to the bathroom because there will be 34,000 portable units distributed throughout the city.
ordered traffic
To control traffic and avoid the characteristic traffic jams caused by street parades, 3,250 agents were assigned, double the number used in 2020 when the ‘blocos’ absent last year due to the covid pandemic paraded for the last time. The authorities will use 1,500 cones, 700 cylinders, 43 motorcycles, 30 cranes and 28 vehicles.
live surveillance
More than 4,000 municipal guards and 2,500 cameras, helicopters and drones will help the Police control security on the city streets in real time during the Rio de Janeiro party. A powerful reinforcement will be in charge of the Militarized Police that will assign some 14,000 uniformed personnel daily throughout the state of Rio.