The Festa dos Tabuleiros (Festival of the Trays) is held every four years in early July in Tomar. The most recent festival took place in July 2007, when over 500,000 people descended upon Tomar to watch the spectacle.

The next festival, which dates back to the 16th Century in the Cult of the Holy Spirit,  is due to take place in 2011.

The festival itself is a five day affair with the ‘parade of the trays’ on the final day. The

Procession consists of four hundred or so young women wearing white, each escorted by a young man in a white shirt, red tie and black trousers.

Each woman  carries on her head a tray with 30 loaves threaded on vertical canes, intertwined with leaves and colourful paper flowers and crowned with a white dove – the symbol of the Holy Spirit. The resulting headdress weighs in the region of 15kg.

There is music and dancing in the streets, fireworks at dawn and dusk and a bullfight the night before the procession. The day after the procession bread, wine and beef are distributed to the local needy. In the intervening four years headdresses are one display in various locations, including cafes and the Tourist information office, throughout Tomar.