En Espaniol

Nowadays Easter in Spain is seen by most of Spanish as a week to take a break from work and relax, or get out of the country if your pocket lets you. The world has pictured Spain as images of many people, most of them tourists, walking by the street, crying and yelling, following Jesus Christ. It is not the way at all, that the Spanish arethese days.

It’s very true that in Andalucia - South of the country there is a special feeling about Easter. If you go to Sevilla it’s impossible not to be infected, in a good way, by the emotion of holy people climbing the gate of the church to touch the statue . It doesn’t matter that you don’t believe in God or don’t go to mass every Sunday. During a few minutes you forget your ideals and you feel like your heart is softening a little. In Spain like in the rest of the Christian world, you can not eat meat on Good Friday. Nobody respects this except elder people that think it’s a way to make amends for their wrongdoings.

I wonder: do they really think that God is going to forgive a life plenty of wrongdoings, or not so plenty it depends, for eating vegetables during one day ? Although it seems to be that if you trust in God you also believe this. Another prohibition that nobody carries out is not to drink alcohol but this is really impossible in the country of the wine and the beer.

Talking about food, I love this part, there are a lot of famous sweets this week, for me the winner with a big distance from the rest is the TORRIJA, I have two reasons: first of all it’s delicious, and the second of all it’s very simple and it’s just fried slices of bread dipped in milk or wine ( personally I prefer the first one ) with cinnamon and at the end you added sugar. This process takes 5 minutes and the result’s are really worth it.

Only for this sweet the Easter could last all year round. In my opinion when you eat one of these you are transported straight to the sky ( never better said ). Also there are many more sweets which names seem extracted from a witch dish: saint’s bones ( it’s supposed to be sweet is a condition to be saint), cat’s tunges ( I think it is because of it’s shape ), etc. They are too sweet for me but many people love them in Spain and during Easter you have to be quick if you want to find them in a bakery because all of them are gone in a few hours.

To conclude just to say that everyone takes from the Easter what he prefers: - One will walk around the streets of their city or village behind their virgin with the hope of having a good year or simply to admire the statue which for most of the times is a work of art. - Others, I would include myself at this group, will rest at home tasting the delicious TORRIJAS, sat on the sofa. - And the most of them will praise the previous week on having good weather during the Eater to enjoy the sun on the sand of the beach, in my case, I’m from Madrid, the most visited places are Valencia and Alicante, because in Madrid we say that we do have a beach but it’s 300km far from the city.

A toast to Easter and to the holidays that this provides us.