Life in Culebrón

I've written about Christmas in Spain so many times that I thought I'd never cover it again. But at the moment, next to nobody is reading the blog so I thought, why not? It's an easy to write, and timely. It's done without reference to sources. I can imagine having to defend its content line by line with most Spaniards; it's a personal take. No doubt errors abound. It's begun, of course. The lights are up in the streets, the municipal nativity scenes are in place, Mariah is singing and Lidl Christmas adverts are on the telly. But the festivities haven't really begun yet—if we don't count the work shindigs and the end of course meals for clubs and classes—because, as you know, any Spanish event, to be worthy of its salt, has to involve eating. Go to the beach and you need a picnic with the rolls wrapped in albal silver paper. Go hiking up a mountain and there may be no mention of stout shoes but there will be a three line whip on taking your almuerzo (lat...

I often wake up around 5 am. Anyone of a certain age will know why. Usually, I find that I don't go back to sleep properly; I doze, and I turn things over in my mind. Typically, the things are of no importance - I remember a job to do, I wonder why my knee is aching, things like that. This morning it was mantecados and polvorones. Mantecados and polvorones are typical Spanish Christmas biscuit-like cakes. They're supposed to taste different to each other, though I can never remember which is which. A website I just consulted tells me that polvorones tend to crumble more than mantecados and that polvorones have ground almonds in them, while mantecados (which get their name from their high content of manteca or lard) don't. The website says the shapes are different too and then goes on to say that both can be round (!) but that polvorones are square and mantecados are rectangular. On other websites I've read that mantecados have various flavourings while polvorones don...