For Spaniards, New Year is a joyful and very noisy holiday with its own characteristics, dishes and traditions. It is interesting to learn how to celebrate the New Year in Spain?
Features
On this festive night in Spain, it is customary to go out and join in the general fun. Small and large streets, the central squares of cities become the epicenter of festivities. At that moment, when the clock hands inform that the New Year has arrived, people become closer to each other - everyone is happy, congratulates each other, exchanging symbolic gifts and hugging.
New Year's celebration in Spanish is celebrated on a grand scale. There is music everywhere, songs, people dancing, watching fireworks, fire shows, showering each other with rain from confetti. The celebration of the Spaniards is always bright, large-scale and fun. Temperamental Spain will not leave anyone indifferent, surprising with its festive customs and unbridled fun.
New Year in Spain is traditionally celebrated on the night of December 31. This holiday takes place during the Christmas holidays, falling just in the middle of them. The holy Christmas period among Catholics, which include the Spaniards, falls on the numbers from December 25 to January 6. These days in Spain, as well as throughout Europe, there are long days off, which people devote to their near and dear ones, spend holidays with them, and during this period of time they celebrate Christmas and then the New Year's Eve.
The Spanish New Year is a kind of continuation of the Christmas festival, but stretched out in time. The difference between the holidays is that it is customary for the Spaniards to celebrate Christmas in the home circle, and New Year is traditionally celebrated in a noisy cheerful company outside the hearth.
New Year's festivities in comparison with Christmas are less significant for the Spaniards, but still this noisy holiday in Spain is revered and loved. After the festive New Year's dinner takes place, people go to the main square of their city and join the general night festivities. In the center of Madrid, festivities from Puerta del Sol are broadcast on television throughout the country. In every city, the celebration takes place everywhere, and people, young and old, join it, taking to the streets. Sitting at home on such a night in Spain is not accepted.
Another feature of the New Year's holiday in Spain was not only the decoration of the Christmas tree, but also the acquisition of a plant called poinsettia in the house. In Spain, they buy it for Christmas, because the plant looks like a star of Bethlehem in its shape and color of leaves.
Gradually, a steady belief appeared that poinsettia brought into the house gives its owners health, prosperity and happiness.
New Year's table
Traditionally, to celebrate the New Year, every Spaniard will take 12 grapes with him to each time to eat them, make a wish and spit out the seeds. Each grape symbolizes one of the twelve months of the year, and to be successful, you need to have time to eat grapes. This tradition spontaneously developed at the end of the XIX century, when a huge grape harvest was harvested in one of the Spanish agricultural regions.
The idea came to farmers to bring the surplus harvest to Madrid and treat them to people for the New Year for free so that they could taste their grapes. A little later, the idea came up to eat grapes at midnight under the watch and make wishes. So the advertising move turned over time into a national tradition, which every Spaniard piously observes.
On New Year's Day, the Spaniards do not make plentiful feasts. But the dishes presented below can be found on New Year's tables in each house.
- They mostly eat snacksprepared from seafood, dried ham, sliced cheese, as well as fruits and sweets.
- Most often with these products you can see tartlets or canapes, and for dessert, the housewives cook nougat with nuts, called turron.
- For sweet, the Spaniards also like shortbread cookies, almond cakes, baked apples with honey, rice pudding. Confectionery is considered an appropriate and welcome gift for friends and colleagues.
- Spain has long been famous as a country where grape growing and winemaking flourish, and on the New Year's table the Spaniards will always have grape wine. Sherry, champagne and low alcohol cider are also common.
- Just like in Russia, the Spaniards raise their glasses on New Year's Eve, but for the holiday they use cava - a sparkling variety of grape wine whose aging is at least 9 months. Cava is made from white grape varieties, and this wine is very much appreciated for its taste.
- A table decoration for a large family during the holiday can be baked turkey or duck, fish, lamb, pork. But these dishes are more common for Christmas, although sometimes they are also prepared for the New Year holiday.
Spaniards love to eat olives, and they will certainly be present at the festive table.
Customs and traditions
According to the tradition existing in Spain, the celebration of the New Year should take place not only in elegant clothes. Accessories also require a special approach. This holiday is celebrated in red underwear. Even men support this tradition and put on red socks, believing that they will bring good luck.
New Year's holidays are fun and jokes, city residents long before the holidays prepare themselves New Year's masks and sew costumes for the carnival. On New Year's Eve, the Spaniards decided to guess their future fate. Especially young people and girls like to do this - they write names on pieces of paper and put them in a bag, and then choose a couple for themselves, with whom they have fun all night.Sometimes such couples soon turn out to be husband and wife.
Before celebrating the New Year, Spaniards prepare gifts called cotillons. A gift is a bag, a basket or a bag, in which New Year's tinsel, serpentine, confetti, carnival attributes, sweets and small souvenirs are stacked. If the Spaniard is on a visit, he will necessarily take with him a cotillion for the hosts, but they too will endow him with a cotillion. You can open a gift only after the clock has struck 12 times, at this moment everyone congratulates each other and considers their gifts. On average, every Spanish family spends 400-500 euros on gifts for relatives and friends.
Children receive their gifts on Christmas, that is, December 25, as well as on the festival of the Magi, which takes place on January 6. Gifts for children are given by Olentzero or Papa Noel - that is how they call Santa Claus in Spanish. This character places gifts for children on the windowsill or leaves them on the balcony, and not under the tree, as is customary in Russia. Olentzero has many helpers - these are magicians and good fairies. The children receive the main gifts not on Christmas Day or even on New Year's Day, but on the Day of the Magi, which is also called the Day of the Three Kings.
On the eve of this significant day, funny carnival celebrations take place, which end with congratulatory speeches of the Magi - these characters decide the question of whether children will receive gifts this year. And, as a rule, to the joy of the little children, the magi decide that all children will receive gifts without exception.
In the next video you will find additional information about the New Year traditions of Spain.
