About the festival
Festa das Latas e Imposição de Insígnias, or simply Latada, is Coimbra's oldest student festival and marks the start of every academic year.
The Latadas are very old festivities, recorded since the mid-19th century. They took place on the day of each Faculty's last exam: at night, the freshmen took to the streets equipped with pots, tin cans, horns, pipes and chamber pots, to pester the classmates who had not yet finished the academic year.
From the racket came the name, and from the prank came the tradition that precedes the Queima das Fitas.
By taking part in the Latada Parade, freshmen were granted emancipation: they moved up a rank. As they could not leave the house after 8 p.m., they were said to be “under the protection of the Cans”.
During the parade, senior students ran after them and beat the cans with clubs and Praxe spoons: as soon as a freshman was stripped of his cans and chamber pot, his head was shaved on the spot. Until the first decades of the 20th century, the Latadas were closely tied to the Queima das Fitas ceremony, held on the same day.
The Latadas were a considerable nuisance to the city and caused conflict between students and the police. To curb the din, in 1901 the professors ruled that all exams would end on the same day, putting a stop to the successive Latadas that ran from May onwards.
Over the years the students shifted the festival towards the fourth-years and the Latada Parade ceased to happen — but the freshmen's rise in rank remained, on the day of the Queima das Fitas.
In the early 1950s the Latadas returned in a slightly different shape: they moved to the start of the academic year and became tied to the Insignia Ceremony, where fourth-years pinned the Grelo to their folders and ribboned students began wearing their ribbons all year round.
A parade followed, with a compulsory stop at the D. Pedro V market to buy the turnip. Every freshman found along the way was swept into the parade, and those wearing the academic gown wore it inside out.
Because of the politics of the time, the Insignia Ceremony parade took on the satirical shape already present in the Queima das Fitas parades. Always under the watchful eye of the PIDE, freshmen became the “placard bearers” for jokes and references aimed at the regime. These Latadas lasted until 1969, when they were interrupted by the Academic Mourning.
In 1981 the Students' Union organised the “Freshman Welcome Week”. It ran without any special event and met a mixed reception: many students, still familiar with the format of earlier decades, sharply criticised the new model and, carried by the revival of the Praxe, called for the old festivities. That is how the Festa das Latas e Imposição de Insígnias was born.
Today the Latada is the festival that welcomes the freshmen of the University of Coimbra. For a week, sports events, cultural happenings and concert nights celebrate the arrival of those who have just joined the Academy.
It all culminates in the Latada Parade, with the baptism on the banks of the Mondego and the Insignia Ceremony.
History and images: Associação Académica de Coimbra (academica.pt).