About Spain: December 2007 Archives

It's also Friday. In short, it somewhat historically commemorates a Christian just-after-the-death-of-Christ legend in which King Herodes ordered the deaths of all children younger than 2 years old which were born in Bethlehem. Gruesome. Later in this entry I'll explain what this means to Spaniards today.

Today I slept late. Too late - having stayed up WAY past my bedtime (as if I had one). The sun was shining and I could hear the nearby works of a building being constructed across the street. I went about my morning routine, did some work after breakfast, and decided to go get my hair cut.

Got dressed and walked through the buzzing neighborhood to my local Peluquería, walked in, said hello to the barber and had a seat in the waiting-area as the finishing touches were put on a female client's hair. I said good morning and "How are we doing today?" to the old woman sitting in the waiting-area seat next to me. She looked me over as if I was an spotted elephant, nodded politely and said simply, "Fine".

This is a small, two-chair unisex barber shop. The barber owns it. He's a slick, now slightly paunched in the middle, one-time ponytail wearing, late 50s Spaniard who always dresses very very nicely - and likes to smoke while cutting hair. He's a super nice, super talkative guy who's been cutting hair since he was 18 years old. I found the place accidentally. When I first moved here someone had told me about a very historical barber shop in the neighborhood which had 5 seats, had old mirrors and early 20th century decor. Cool! I walked around looking for the place - and apparently walked right past it to the one I now faithfully patronize. The barber was so cool, nice, and VERY upfront. We liked either other immediately. He asked where I was from, I told him, and then he had all kinds of questions about me and life in the USA and WHY I'd come to live in Spain.

Whenever it's time for a haircut and just before I walk out the door and on my way there I always have a few moments of anxiety because I know this will be a 30-45 minute block of time when I'll ONLY be speaking Spanish - AND OFTEN. This occasion was no exception.

Today I sit in the hair-washing chair and lean back as the previous two ladies are leaving, kissing the barber and wishing him a wonderful New Year and exchanging small talk on their way out the door. They also throw a "And Happy New Year to you too!" as my neck is bent back in the wash basin and I give a smile, a wave, and a "Same to you!" as they leave.

I think the barber always enjoys the days I come to get my haircut. Maybe I'm simply being self-centered and imperialistic but this guy is always all smiles when I come in. Maybe it's just because he cuts Spaniards' hair day after day and has the same Spanish-discussions. With me he knows it'll be something different. Maybe I'm wrong.

Today we talked mainly about Spanish topics like what we did for Christmas. He pointed to his decorated Christmas tree in the corner of the barber shop and said he and his family had been celebrating "Papa Noel" at home for about the last 20 years - long before it was fashionable. FYI: "Papa Noel" - or Santa Claus - in Spain is a recent observance, coming several years after the dictator Francisco Franco died in 1975. But he also asked me about our Thanksgiving Day in the United States, what it meant, on what day it fell, and how we celebrate it. He already knew about the turkey feast, no doubt from seeing it portrayed in movies.

I'd told him, jokingly, that this year I didn't really celebrate the "Santa Claus" form of Christmas "Now that I'm nearly totally Spanish" and that no one I know here really does, so no presents for/from me this year except among my biological family. My parents really enjoyed the Tienda.com gift basket with Spanish goods and my sister was happy to receive the Amazon.com gift certificate. All were ONLINE ordered and shipped goods this year.

Between puffs from his cigarette, he and I also discussed how we were spending our New Years Eve. I told him that unlike last year when I spent part of the post-midnight playing cards & dominoes - the typical evening events on New Years Eve in Spain - that I was thinking of going to the Puerta del Sol to be with the other immigrants, tourists, and the 2 or 3 Madrileños celebrating the the New Year and eating the 12-grapes at midnight -- or, actually, eating them AFTER midnight because it's impossible to hear the 12-chimes of midnight over the din of the crowd.

The barber found it interesting and said that he had gone ONE TIME to the Puerta del Sol just to have the experience but never expects to return because A) there are too many people, B) the plaza party stops 10 minutes after midnight (and the police force you out of the square too), and C) it's impossible to get a taxi after partying downtown and there's no bus or metro service if you stay too late. I told him that by my going to the Puerta del Sol for New Years Eve - Nochevieja - I'm fortifying my community standing as being "more Spanish". hehehe... He laughed. He said he plans to spend the evening at home with family singing karaoke and playing games.

He finished my hair, brushed me off, I paid him and gave a tip. After helping me on with my coat - as he does with all his clients - I gave him a small box of chocolates and wished him a happy holidays. With that he opened the door for me and I stopped in the doorway, spotting a 2 Euro coin on the ground just outside the door.

I said to him, "Wow! Look at the luck I have today! There's a 2 Euro coin down there." I stepped out to the sidewalk, leaned down to pick up the coin and couldn't get it. ! I said, "Wow. This is really stuck!" And with that, the barber, now standing in front of me, laughing loudly and said, "I GOT YOU! I GOT YOU!"

I stood up and asked him what was so funny. He asked me if I knew what day it was. I answered, confused, that it was the 28th of December. He then put his hand on my shoulder having lost his smile and said to me in all seriousness, "You see, my friend, you're not as Spanish as you might think. Today is Día de los Santos Inocentes", the day we play tricks on each other. No matter how long you live here and no matter how much you learn about Spain there will always be things you will never totally understand." How true that is.

But my question is, how does a Christian myth about killing babies in Bethlehem become a joyous, trick-playing holiday in Spain and Latin America?

It seems that in the Middle Ages, Christian writers speculated that between 3,000 and 15,000 Bethlehem babies were murdered by King Herodes just after the death of Jesus Christ. But according to the official census for the town of Bethlehem there were no more than 800 total inhabitants at the time. So in the mathematical reality, it is now presumed that no more than 20 births would take place each year at that time and 50% of them would die of natural causes before reaching their second birthday. So according to calculations, no more than 10 should have been murdered in any given year. So where does the 3,000 and 15,000 figure come from?

Answer: It's a lie. A trick. And now these tricks are played on unsuspecting suckers like me who don't know any better. The media often publishes false headlines in their newspapers, radio stations broadcast false or shocking "news items", and friends trick one another.

So how Spanish am I REALLY? Okay. I'm not THAT Spanish.

By the way, if anyone would like to buy MadridMan.com it's for sale. I'm moving to Mars with my recent lottery winnings, establishing a colony called "Mayberry", and planning to change my name to Andy Taylor. I'll be the Sheriff and will need a reliable deputy. Any volunteers?

It's not Christmas in Spain until people start lining up to buy their lottery tickets!

The "Loteria de Navidad" is Spain's Christmas Lottery. The drawing takes place on the morning of December 22nd with children singing out the numbers stamped on small balls which roll out of a gigantic bingo-style ball. There are literally hundreds of winning numbers for the Christmas lottery in Spain. Some are BIG winners and some are small winners but I don't know how the winning amount is assigned to any given number.


By the time the Christmas lottery tickets are available is about the same time LONG LINES begin to form to buy them. Puerta del Sol and Gran Via lottery offices are the busiest, probably because they're in the downtown. But also, theses locations are considered to be considered "Lucky" because that's where patrons have been buying their Christmas lottery tickets for years and years.

Apparently it's a custom in Spain to buy Christmas lottery tickets whenever visiting another city or town. It's another custom to buy and gift lottery tickets as Christmas gifts to your friends and family.


This year is the first time I've bought Christmas Lottery Tickets here in Spain. Why not join in the tradition? I realize lotteries are a total waste of money and the odds against winning are worse than getting hit by lightning on a sunny day. But why not? It's tradition and I'm a new-ish Spanish resident. I'd seen the lines going down the street at Gran Via outside of Madrid's most famous and oldest lottery offices; "Doña Manolita" - founded in 1931. It seems to be a pretty festive atmosphere for those waiting, many of whom are smiling and talking with other patrons about what they'd do with the money should they win.



The Christmas lottery tickets are sold in "Decimos". Each lottery ticket carries FIVE NUMBERS. And each individual lottery ticket is sold as ONE TENTH of the whole ticket. Confused? I'll explain - if I can. Each Christmas Lottery Ticket has one number. But each NUMBER carries a total of 10 INDIVIDUAL tickets. Each ticket costs 20 Euros. To buy the ENTIRE set of 10 tickets for any given lottery number you'll pay 200 Euros. That's 10 Tickets X 20 Euros = 200 Euros. I don't think they print out the tickets with your chosen number but they do have stacks of different of numbers from which to choose. Often people will choose a ticket which ends in "7" because it's their lucky number. Or they'll choose "65" because it was the year they were born.

Knowing the lines were long downtown I instead chose one of the lottery commission offices here in my neighborhood. I got there at about 5:45pm, hoping the line wouldn't too long after re-opening after the lunchtime break. IT WASN'T! In fact, there was ONLY one person at the window when I arrived! What luck! LUCK!?!?!? Hmmm.. That MIGHT have been a sign. hehehe... So I tell the name behind the plexiglass window that I wanted to buy a lottery ticket. He asked, in Spanish, "For Christmas?" "Yes." So I chose the ending numbers which I felt where "lucky", the man zipped them off of their perforation and handed them to me in exchange for my 40 Euros. 40 Euros thrown out the window! Well, we'll see.

Stepping away from the window I took a longer look at my chosen numbers. Hmmm.. I'm not happy with them, but fine. Maybe I've made a bad choice. Well, I've bought them and it's over and done. Surely I can't get a refund. Ha! So I leave the lottery office and walk up the hill towards home. 100 meters later I pass ANOTHER lottery ticket office and there's no waiting customers. Hmmm.. ANOTHER SIGN, MAYBE?! Doubt it. So I step in and buy ONE MORE ticket, choosing a GOOD ticket with GOOD numbers this time. Surely this one's a winner. (crossing fingers and toes)

But remember that since I bought only a "Decimo" - or one-tenth of one ticket, say if my number wins and the jackpot for that particular number is, for example, 20,000 Euros. One-tenth of that is, of course, 2,000 Euros and that's what I'd win. There are people who buy the entire 10-set-tickets for 200 Euros but not me. I'm not that well off!

I bought 3 tickets total. And like a good friend, I GIFTED one ticket to 2 different friends with the understanding that if any of the three tickets win we three would share the winnings. I've already made photocopies of the three tickets so we can all be sure that no one will be skipping the country with a big jackpot without telling the others. hehehe... OH PLEASE, OH PLEASE, OH PLEASE LET US WIN!! I'VE BEEN A GOOD BOY THIS YEAR!! "Calgon, Take Me Away!!!"

Christmas in Madrid is something to experience; Christmas lights are everywhere, holiday shoppers pack the streets, and the bars and restaurants are seemingly full ALL the time!


During Christmastime, getting from POINT A to POINT B in Madrid is generally calculated by using the following equation:

So if it once took you 4 minutes to casually walk from Opera to Puerta del Sol it NOW takes you 16 minutes. It could take even longer if you encounter more than 2 crowd-creating street performers/statues, more than 3 groups of families standing in the middle of the street, or more than 4 families of 5 walking shoulder to shoulder - or in the normal, meandering Spanish style.

The above is a real pet peve of mine - not only in Madrid but in the world. I think Spaniards have perfected the art of walking in a blind, snakelike patter without hitting anyone. Lots of walking and suddenly stopping in the middle of the flow of pedestrian traffic, lots of "looking right and pointing left" while talking to the person at your right, lots of baby stroller-pushing parents with no sense of direction.

Yesterday I was passing through the murky current of Calle de Arenal and passed a couple talking and walking casually. I was passing on woman's left. She was talking to her husband at her right. The woman was holding a lighted cigarette in her left hand and suddenly reached out with left hand at shoulder height and nearly put my eye out with her red-hot tobacco. Luckily, my football running-back instincts kicked in and I bobbed-and-weaved my head out of the way.


The bars are ABSOLUTELY FULL with holiday revelers, making drink-and-snack shopping stops. Friday night I was in one of the Las Bravas bars in old downtown Madrid - the brand new one - to get a quick order of Patatas Bravas and a beer and could barely squeeze myself a tiny space at the bar as there were not tables available. At one of the other Las Bravas bars the interior was so full that people were eating and drinking at the outdoor barrels and tables while wearing their winter coats. (see photo at left) Luckily there is more than one of these fantastic bars in the chain in Madrid - and oddly enough (or luckily enough) - they're all within 100 meters of one another.


Christmas shopping anywhere around Puerta del Sol area like, for example, along Calle Preciados or Gran Via is an experience. Be sure to wear your PATIENCE HAT before going out. The lines are long at the cash registers, the aisles are full of meandering shoppers with eyes pointing left and right but rarely straight ahead, and the store temperatures are HIGH.

Buses and metro trains are FULL. The bus I typically take to and from OPERA is now full at nearly any hour - but particularly from 5pm to 11:30pm any day of the week. Standing room only. And they're HOT too! All the windows steam up with all those sardine-squeezed bus riders, all front to back, shoulder to shoulder. The metro cars are the same. It's amazing how many people are moving to-and-fro these days in the nation's capital.

Madrid Christmas lights are nice - simple, but nice. There's not a lot of "frill" to this year's lights, mostly consisting of square sheets of hanging white lights, blob-like white light patterns, and an occasional angel or star. The tall, lacy white-light Christmas tree next to the Palacio Real is something special just as the SUPER TALL green and red Christmas tree next to the Rio Manzanares near the Puente de Segovia bridge.

I'd LOVE to take one of the double-decker buses, decorated and managed by the City of Madrid, which takes 1-Euro paying passengers around Madrid to see the Christmas lights. It must be a beautiful, although cold ride. I hear there are hours-long lines waiting for a chance to get on.

The 2007 El Corte Inglés CORTYLANDIA display is an annual family tradition - okay, it's just for kids but the parents have to take them along. I walked through the piles of families and baby strollers and took the below photo at the Puerta del Sol store location - all El Corte Inglés' have their own. I have to wonder why El Corte Inglés itself spells it CORTYLANDIA but everywhere on the internet everyone (Spaniards) spells it CORTILANDIA. I guess the latter is more Spanish-correct than the term with the Y in it - which is no-doubt more English-ized, hence the name of El Corte Inglés.

And below is a YouTube video of Cortylandia 2007 - not my video...



More Madrid Christmas Photos coming all this month!!! Be sure to check back often.

Many times we don't even notice them - until they're gone. We walk by them day after day. On occasion we'll pop in to buy someone small. In other cases it's where we do our near-daily shopping.

I'm talking about the local shops where we buy our meats, the shops where we buy our chicken, the shops where we buy our fresh daily bread, and the shops where we buy our snacks. These shops are most often owned AND operated by the same person - or maybe operated by the son or daughter of the owner.

With the fast influx of foreigners into Spain from many different nations, the common ownership of cars, the prevalence of "Centros Comerciales" (i.e. Malls) on the outskirts of the city, and the sprouting "Los Chinos" (owned & operated by Chinese and selling China-made goods for cheap) throughout the neighborhood, the Spanish-owned individual shops are closing at an unsettling rate. I say it's unsettling because many Spaniards - and their families - are losing their livelihoods, and the friendly faces we've been seeing day after day are leaving us, replaced by new faces having unusual accents and many of whom have difficulty speaking Spanish.

Today I saw one of these store owners in the neighborhood as I was passing through. We stood on the street corner and talked for a few minutes. I thought it odd that she was on the street at this particular hour, an hour when she'd normally be working in her store. I asked her if she was working today and that's when she told me that TODAY was her last day with the store and it was closing. She said the recent break-ins, the cost of needed renovations, and the slacking business has made it difficult to make a living. She said she and her husband were leaving the neighborhood too.

Many days I'll walk by her tiny shop as it's on the main street where I live. And there she is, sitting on a small stool behind her counter, watching a tiny black and white TV. No business. She works 6-days per week and closes 3 hours for lunch/siesta. I mentioned to her once when buying some snacks that she carried so many (food) things. She said, "I carry a lot so that I might sell a little." Her shop is in the "old style" of Spanish shop where the customer walks in and waits at the counter, asking the clerk for this or that and the clerk retrieves the requested items from behind the counter on various shelves.

She's been in this neighborhood in her store for the last 20 years or so. Everyone knows her in the neighborhood. Everyone likes her. She's a short, squat Spanish woman who speaks her mind very directly but always has a smile on her face and always very talkative. She knows all of my "Spain family" by name and always asks about them. As far as I'm aware, she's the last Spanish-owned store of her kind in the neighborhood. All the (many) other stores in the neighborhood are run by Chinese people.

Maybe I've had a little something to do with the Spanish woman deciding to close. Her shop is farther from my house than the Chinese run store directly across the street so I tend to do my snack-and-drink-and-last-minute-necessity shopping there. This shop is a typical self-serve convenience-store-type place where you walk in and choose items on shelves. Plus, this place next door is open every day of the week, opens at 9am (or earlier) and closes at about 2am (or later) every night. It does NOT close for lunch/siesta. I sometimes see the clerks eating meals in the open store. The Chinese women who works the shop is there at ALL opening hours. God, that must be something. She's very very nice, always has a big smile for me when she sees me enter her shop happily waves at me while I'm waiting for the bus across the street. She always calls me "Mi amigo! Mi amigo!" but those are almost the only words of Spanish she knows apart from her numbers - and oftentimes I don't understand her, causing her to spin her calculator around to show me the total.

Across the street from my building was a bar like no other bar in the neighborhood - and it was right there, across the street. It was very small but very very nicely decorated with a rustic, wooden decor. The owner/bartender was a 50-something Spanish man who expected to make this his "Retirement Bar" where he'd pass his last working years serving drinks to good neighborhood folks who appreciated a nice, friendly place with a friendly bartender. I liked him immediately upon our meeting. He and his wife served a wonderful, home-cooked, no-choice "Menu del Dia" every afternoon for 8 Euros in the tiny back room which only had five small, 2-person tables. The meal was always something hearty like Cocido Madrileño, Pork Chops and potatoes, or something similar. I ate lunch there about once a month and went in for drinks with about the same frequency. The free tapas offered with drinks were simple but good, plentiful, and always served with a genuine smile and a story to tell.

A couple months ago he closed his bar after being open only one year. I was there on his last night and bought a couple bottles of his leftover Rioja wine. He stated there just wasn't enough business to stay open although he did enjoy the quality of clientèle at his bar. Unfortunately, the bar didn't suit the neighborhood in which it was located. Across the street there is a wall-paper-pealing, loud-football-game showing, no-tapas-offering, terrible-coffee serving bar and it's doing just great! It's run by a Latino family whose bar tendress seems, from her facial expression when you walk in the door, to rather throw wet coffee grounds at you than serve you a beer. Some customers don't know quality when it punches them in the nose. In fact, many people would rather take a punch in the nose than pay 10 Eurocents more for the beer at the nice, friendly bar across the street - the one which closed.

So I'm sad to know the Spanish woman is closing her shop down the street and leaving the neighborhood. I could have patronized her shop more and probably should have. I could have been more of a "Regular" at the bar across the street too but I just don't drink that much and my Spanish wasn't good enough to feel 100% comfortable while surrounded by talkative Spaniards.

It's sad to lose the places and people we like, settling for things which simply serve a purpose with no added benefit of actually enriching our lives. Luckily, many of the "toda la vida" shops are still hanging on. But for how long?

The above are just a few case files for the "Changing Face" of Madrid - and Spain.