Comida, cultura, lengua y viajes — Food, culture, language, and travel!

This is an additional installment to my first Christmas in Spain post (here). I came across a few more interesting Christmas traditions that I thought are worth sharing with you all.

Winter officially arrived here in Spain yesterday, December 21. You wouldn't have realized it though, since the temperature in Marbella (where I'm spending my Christmas holiday) has been hovering around 71ºF, and people are still building sand castles on the beach, and some guiris (tourists) are wearing their shorts and flip-flops.

Today was the Sorteo extraordinario lotería de navidad (the drawing of the christmas lottery). In the weeks and days leading up to Christmas, those who can afford to begin buying lottery tickets for the national lottery drawing. Starting around eight in the morning, a live broadcast of the drawing shows two large metal spheres that rotate to mix wooden balls, 1,807 prize amounts on one side (2.52 billion euros in total), and 99,999 different numbered balls that represent all of different ticket numbers sold in Spain. [Ten tickets, each called a décimo of each number are sold, thus ten people can buy the same number (i.e. the number 23,489) and they don't have to divide up the prize amount]. Next, two children on the stage announce (read: sing) the prize amount and the number that won it. When the largest prize (El gordo) is announced (4,000,000 euros), it is immediately broadcasted where that décimo was sold, and shortly after there are images of the winning families in the street, spraying champagne on each other.


Aside from the impressive Christmas light displays in every plaza and centro in the cities, the shopping malls are decked out with decorations just as they are in the U.S. Below is a picture I took this evening in La Cañada, a major shopping center in Marbella, which despite the country suffering from an economic downturn, has been full of people every weekend I have gone. While Marbella is a more affluent area of Spain, this also goes for other areas like Granada where I have seen a lot of consumer turnout, which seems like a positive contradiction to reports of high unemployment and poor economic performance in the country.


Back on the subject of Christmas food, the table has been covered with every type of chocolate and snack you could want, and the Roscón de Reyes (Kings' Ring), a traditional pastry eaten to celebrate the Epiphany will make its appearance on January 6th. It's filled with fruits and nuts, and hudden somewhere inside is a small toy figure - either of Jesus or others like little toys for kids - and a dry fava bean. If you find the small figure you get the crown in the middle, and if you get the bean you have to pay for the Roscón.


Stay tuned for more updates as they come along!


Photo credits