Gaspar visiting Santa Cruz de la Palma Although Father Christmas does visit Spanish children, he’s a new arrival. Traditionally the presents arrive on the morning of January 6th, when the three kings visit baby Jesus. (The sales don’t normally start this early, because Christmas isn’t over here.) And on the evening of the 5th, their majesties ride in procession through most of the major towns and villages in Spain. In…
Today is Holy Innocents’ Day, which commemorates the massacre of the innocents by Herod in Matthew’s gospel (although according to Wikipedia, it’s probably not a historical event). In Spain and Spanish-speaking countries, it’s the Spanish equivalent of April Fool’s Day. Here’s an example.
Christmas trees are a newish thing here, although probably most houses have one now. The main traditional decoration is nativity scenes. Some just show the stable, but some public ones are so elaborate that they include the whole village, and it’s always a Canarian village. Obviously that’s historically inaccurate, but no more so than all the English nativity scenes where Mary and Jesus are blond. The best one on the…
Lotteries are big business in Spain. And I’m happy to say that people do win – this week 70 people in Breña Alta shared 7 million €. Good luck to them. The two big lotteries over Christmas are particularly popular, “El Gordo” (the fat one) on December 22nd and “EL Niño” (the child) on January 6th have extra large prizes, but your extra unlikely to win because they sell so…
A feature of many livestock fairs on La Palma is the dragging contest (Arrastre de ganado). Two cows or two bulls drag a weight around a course (usually 70 m), and the fastest team wins. The animals compete in various classes – heifers, bullocks, cows and bulls, dragging different weights. At San Isidro, the weights started at 400 kg, and went up to 800 kg, and the fastest team dashed…
Yesterday the silk museum in El Paso held an open day, with a performance by the folk group Cumbre Nueva. I’m having a technical problem with editing the video, but here’s some photos of the performance. .