HISTORY The Gasparilla Pirate Festival is a large parade and a host of related community events held almost every year since 1904 in Tampa, Florida celebrating the apocryphal legend of José Gaspar (also known as Gasparilla), a mythical Spanish pirate who supposedly operated in Southwest Florida in the early 1800s. Tampa’s Gasparilla season runs from mid-January to early March and features three large parades. The focal point of Gasparilla is the Parade of Pirates, […]