Los Reyes Magicos - by Theo

The streets of Madrid today are largely empty except for queues at the bakeries and the sweet, perfumed smell of Roscon de los Reyes, the sweet, cream-filled, circular cake with candied fruit that is the traditional fare on January the 6th.

It's a national holiday in Spain and, for many youngsters, the most exciting day of the year. For, on January 6th, Los Reyes Magicos, the magic Kings, the Three Wise men, come, bearing gifts for well behaved youngsters and coal for naughty tykes. (Some bakeries even stock sweet coal, a black, honeycomb-like sweet!) For while kids here do know about Santa Claus, he's barely made a dent; none of my students get gifts from him. Here, it's all about Los Reyes, the only grumble being that as they arrive at the very end of Christmas there's little time for the children to enjoy their presents before school starts again (tomorrow). It's a family day, though last night there may well have been a trip out to watch one of the many Calbagatas (processions), either a local one in the barrio, or the huge, municipal parade down the Paseo de Castellano. We went last year, but it started a bit late for Rosie and I doubt she'd have got much from it.


However, the 3 Kings did come to Rosie and, seeing as it's a Spanish tradition, they brought her Spanish books. An inflatable book to play with in the bath, and a beautiful pop-up book called 'Rosita juega al escondite' ('Little Rosie plays hide and seek'). What's slightly disappointing is that both are translations, though the second one is excellently translated, as they've even managed to keep the rhyme and meter intact; if there are any locally produced children's books we have yet to find them.

One student...

... and they weren't even one of mine!!

Yesterday was our first day back at work, but thanks to a combination of blizzard conditions in Madrid and the fact that it was the day after Los Reyes and many people were still other of town in their family Pueblos, my four scheduled classes yielded just one student! To add to the irony, she wasn't even my student! Thanks to even worse blizzard conditions in the UK, two teachers didn't make it back in time for the start of term, so the one student I taught was in a class I was covering for a colleague stranded in England!

Oh well, I've now got lessons planned up until next Wednesday, so it wasn't a complete waste.

Los Reyes by Theo

Today is a holiday in Spain - Los Reyes - a day that celebrates the arrival of the 3 Kings in Bethlehem and is traditionally when the giving of gifts takes place in Spain, which makes a lot of sense. We're having a nice lazy time of it, enjoying the last day of the holidays, as I start work tomorrow.

One of the key features of Los Reyes, is the Calbagata, a huge parade, which takes place the night before. Many barrios have their own, smaller parade, but we decided to go and watch the main one along the Paseo de Castellana. We arrived a good 45 minutes early, but that wasn't anywhere near early enough. There were loads of people there already and, as this is an event mainly aimed at children, some thoughtful parents had brought step-ladders.

It was our bucket-at-a-festival trick taken to its logical conclusion, but obviously meant that unless the floats were very high we weren't going to see much. We shouldn't have worried as, after a mounted band, the first 'float' was very high indeed, being an aerialist suspended beneath several dozen helium balloons and followed by massive giraffe puppets.




A huge, mechanical elephant puppet was also in the parade, possibly the highlight of the spectacle although the floats - all sponsored by services and companies such as the fire-brigade, post office and TV stations - were also pretty impressive.


As each float passed, the crowd was showered with hard, edible, projectiles flung from those on the floats or following on foot. Trying to catch one was pretty hard, though I did manage it, especially given that the natural Spanish tendency to cheat had led some people to exploit the height of their position on step ladders by opening up their umbrellas upside-down to catch the sweets. Kate and I were taking note of tactics for future reference!

It was a fun afternoon out - we'd been browsing in Sol beforehand - and on the way back we picked up our traditional Los Reyes Roscon, a large doughnut-style cake. Ours is just a tiny one - the family-sized ones are huge - and we opted for a non-cream filled one. Whichever of us gets the bit with the favour in has to pay for it!