Life in Culebrón

Instead of thinking about Red Letter Days or Bank Holidays in Spain, you have to consider working and non-working days. The non-working days, which are very similar to, but not the same as, British public or bank holidays, are set by three levels of government: town halls, regional governments, and the national government. This means that days off differ in every town and every region. Only the days designated by the central government are definitively the same throughout Spain. The only infallible way to know when there are holidays in your town is to consult the lists of "días no laborables" published by various sources, such as newspapers and chambers of commerce and easy to find with any search engine. I've written similar pieces before. It's not an easy read but Alison asked me to do it again, so I'm going to try a different approach. I'm going to presume that you live in Spain, and I'll use six municipalities in three different regions as examples. I...

One of the many complaints that Britons level against Spain is that Spaniards have lots and lots of days off, festive days. The implication is clear. In fact there can be up to fourteen days off in Spain. In England, unless there are additions for some particular event, the usual ration is eight days. It's very seldom that Spaniards get all fourteen days though. This year, 2023, there will be 12 and sometimes the number drops to 10.  That's because there is a slight, but important, difference in the thinking behind public holidays in the two countries. In one the idea is of a holiday entitlement and in the other the idea is that there should be a rest from work on a festive day. In England, each year, you get eight extra days holiday, on top of any work related holiday entitlement. If a public holiday happens to fall on a Saturday or Sunday then you will get the previous or the next working day off as a substitute. In Spain if the festive day falls on Saturday or Sunday then it...

The wettest April since Noah took to boating according to some news reports. We had Easter tide guests. We were confined to barracks. The Easter parades were cancelled. Sight seeing was off. We presumed the shopping centres would be closed for the bank holidays. We Brits here in Pinoso seem to call bank holidays, Red Letter Days. I presume that's because the holiday dates are printed in red on paper calendars. I'm going to call them bank holidays because that's what I've always called public holidays. National Holidays are the same all over Spain. Most people will not work on those days but that doesn't, necessarily, mean that they will work fewer days in the working year. The Spanish logic is that bank holidays are not actually holidays, they are days when you don't work. So only the extra non working days need to be included in the holiday calendar. If, for instance, a National Holiday falls on a Sunday, like Christmas Day 2016, it will not be shown as a b...