Tonight’s the night!

Tomorrow is Epiphany, also known in Spain as Los Reyes Magos – the magic kings.

Of course referring to the three wise men – the three kings – who visited the baby Jesus bearing gifts. The tradition of gift giving in Spain during the Christmas season focuses on this day and, instead of writing letters to Santa, children here write to Los Reyes Magos.

And on the eve of Los Reyes (January 5th) there is a huge parade held in most towns, cities and villages called the Cabalgata, with floats pulled by small tractors – each one depicting the characters from various fairy tales and traditional stories for children.

The last float carries Los Reyes Magos – meanwhile, all of the floats have lots of children on them who toss out sweets to everyone waiting along the parade route. After the parade has passed the streets are sticky with broken candies and melted sugar …

Another tradition of Reyes is to eat roscon – a somewhat gross looking pastry filled with whipped cream and topped with candied fruit and toasted almonds. I’ve never tried this myself but this morning I convinced Nog that he had to go for it, as our favourite brekky bar serves slabs of this stuff during the festive season. He said he liked it but couldn’t see himself eating mass quantities of it . . . typically vague 😉