Sunday 16 December 2007

Nativity Scenes [Belénes]

We went to look at a spectacular belén today. It's in a building on Puerta del Sol - I think it's the Town Hall, but I could well be wrong. Nativity scenes are immensely popular in Spain, and a lot of work and detail goes into them. Well worth standing in a queue for! This particular scene apparently has more than 400 figures in it.























There's one figure missing from this scene: the baby Jesús won't be putting in an appearance until the 25th:



We had kind of planned to make our own belén, but a shortage of time (and money!) put the mockers on that. I did start a little minimalist one...



But then it turned into a shrine to commercialism!

6 comments:

MS CUTE PANTS said...

They remind me very much of the ones they have back in Bombay. Due to the presence of a large Catholic population, nativity scenes would pop up within communities, competitions were held. It was lovely...This is something I missed when I was in Dxb and something I still miss now, in Canada & Bermuda.

halfmanhalfbeer said...

Keefie: that is absolutely amazing!! The love and attention that has gone into that, wow! and just for good measure some more exclaimation marks!!

Hope you and the missus have a wonderful, merry and joyous Christmas in your new home.

HMHB

Anonymous said...

It seems to me that if you are going to put that much detail into something like this you should at least put in a train set of a model racing car track. What it lacks in historical accuracy is more than made up for in showmanship.

The lady I buy eggs from in the market has a chicken nativity scene with an egg in the manger.

El Casareño Inglés said...

I failed to spot the one figure that appears in almost all beléns - the caganer.

What's a caganer you ask? See www.caganer.com

We ordered the "andaluz" to go in ours (no pun intended).

Seabee said...

Happy Christmas Keefie

Jayne said...

Crikey, it's absolutely stunning & actually so nice to see 'tradition' is being kept alive.