FESTIVITIES.
Spain has a lot of years of history so we have many traditions and some of them are a mixture of the different cultures that have been there. Sometimes it’s difficult to know how old a tradition is or who was the first to do something.
I think that the most famous are the “San Fermin” and the “Tomatina”. San Fermin is very popular but it isn’t the only palace in the country that has bullfights and running. There are full of places where they celebrate it too. The origin of that kind of celebrations is not very clear but some people say that it started about 800 years ago. They don’t know exactly when because they think it could have changes during the time.





The tomatina isn’t an old tradition and also not very important, in fact lots of Spanish don’t know it. I think it’s more famous out of Spain than there.
Every city, town and village in Spain has his own event and some of them are more recognized than the others all around the country. Those festivities are usually celebrated during for a few days and the government of each place organizes many activities for all age’s people. Some people spend all the year preparing it and almost those days they don’t go to work. The major parts of the festivities are to remember some saint.
Some of the festivities that are on the top are the “Fallas” of Valencia and the carnivals of two places that are Canarias and Cadiz. The first one is important because they have the best fire-works in the country and very big statues that they burn the last day. The carnival of Canarias is famous because they spend a number of days choosing the queen of the carnival. The girls who want to be the queen have to wear a very heavy and amazing dress, which help them to win the title. The other carnival is well known because there are some groups of men that sing songs composed by them and they don’t play any instrument. They usually talk about actual topics but in a hilarious way, just to make fun. The government organizes competitions to choose the best.





Finally one of the most important and the one that everybody enjoy at the same time, like in other countries, it’s Christmas time. All of the students have holidays and many workers too. People spend those days with their families, so most of them have to move to other cities. Other people prefer to make a trip to an exotic place. Our Christmas time stars on the 24th of December and ends on the 6th of January, but we celebrate more specially five days of all them. There is a typical meal for each day, but it can be different depending on the area where you are from.
The most interesting and funny to explain now is the New Year’s Eve. That day people wear elegant clothes and have a dinner with their families or their closest friends. After dinner everybody go to sit down around the television with a dish in their hand that contains twelve grapes. Every channel of television shows a clock that is in square in Madrid. This clock sounds twelve times that’s the reason why we eat twelve grapes, and the last one is at twelve o’clock. Then everybody stand up, most of them with all the grapes in their mouth because there isn’t enough time, and they start to give kisses and hugs to the others. After that there are parties in all the pubs and discos, as well some people organizes the party in their houses till late. It’s very common go to have breakfast after the party and try to decrease the hangover.