Red-letter Days

When discussing holidays in Spain, one often refers to them as red-letter days, because they are marked on all calendars in red ink, as opposed to the normal black ink. If your hairdresser calls to reschedule your appointment, as mine did once, it means that it was inadvertently set for a red-letter day, and his legal advisor has said he should not work that day.  If your dental office calls two days ahead of time to remind you of an upcoming appointment when they usually call just the day ahead, as happened to me recently, it means that the intervening day is a red-letter day and they can't be open then to give you a reminder call. Spain has lots of red-letter days, but this past week they outdid themselves with three in one week.

I first realized this triple-header was taking place when we went on October 5 to the pharmacy in Ciudad Quesada, a wonderful drugstore that caters to a large, multinational clientele. At any time there are three or maybe four assistants behind various counters helping the public, and it could be that a different language is being spoken with each transaction. At the beginning of October there were handwritten signs outside the door to the pharmacy, and inside, too. The signs took up a lot of space, because they were in Spanish, in French, and in English, and they were announcing the opening and closing hours on the coming Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday. I grew light-headed trying to read through them all and keep track of what was coming up.

Monday, October 7 was a local holiday for the city of Rojales. In addition to Rojales proper, Rojales comprises the huge development of Ciudad Quesada and the village of Benijófar. Strictly speaking, October 7 is not a red-letter day on the calendar, because calendars are not printed for just one community. But within the municipality, red-letter rules apply. Stores would be closed in all those villages so everyone could celebrate the patron saint, Nuestra Señora de Rosario. But in spite of the fact that this meant that all my usual shopping areas would be closed, the closings would be limited to that one community. I, for example, still could plan on attending the first Spanish class of the season sponsored by my own town hall in Algorfa, because that is a different municipality and Algorfa has its local holiday earlier in the year. And when I went in the afternoon to my second Spanish lesson, in San Luis, a neighborhood on the outskirts of the city of Torrevieja, I could stop at the Mercadona grocery store across the street, because they were allowed to be open, since they were a part of Torrevieja.

The Wednesday holiday was more far-reaching. This was the Día Comunidad Valenciana, the holiday celebrated throughout the entire comunidad (autonomous region) of Valencia, which in addition to the province of Valencia to our north, includes the provinces of Castellón, and the one we live in, Alicante. Wednesday was a quiet day. I didn't even bother to leave the house. I had a good work day at the computer and I had prepared well ahead of time for the guests we had invited for drinks and snacks, a slide show of our vacation pictures, and good conversation in the evening.

Yesterday, Saturday, October 12, was a national holiday, and one of only two secular holidays celebrated nation-wide throughout Spain, El Día de la Hispanidad, and known in the United States as Columbus Day (but of course, my American calendar shows it this year on October 14, because almost all holidays there float to Monday). The day passed without any celebration on my part. It is interesting that some businesses are allowed to be open for half a day (that would be up until 2:00 PM) on red-letter days; these fall into the "leisure" and "food" categories. So I wasn't terribly surprised to see that the Mercadona grocery store was open when I was out in late morning to go to the ATM, which never celebrates, and of course, restaurants and bars were open, so we stopped for a café con leche at the Halfway House close to the ATM. But we came home again and worked around the house for the rest of the day and were not even very disturbed by the fireworks later on in the evening.

This Sunday morning we went, as usual, to the Zoco (outdoor) market for our regular produce and dried fruits shopping. Instead of having a cup of coffee there, I insisted on driving in to Torrevieja to "check out" the Habaneras shopping center. I had read in a couple local papers that the city of Torrevieja, as well as Orihuela (location of the super-duper shopping mall) had been designated "area of tourism" status. That means, legally, that stores can decide if they want to be open on Sundays, which are also red-letter days in Spain. Orihuela had gained that status earlier and made that decision and was now drawing business away from the older Habaneras center. I surmised that since Torrevieja had now achieved that status, Habaneras would now be open on Sundays.

It was, and several other people had guessed the same, but not so many that it was too crowded to browse around the shops comfortably. We spent a pleasant hour checking out new fall styles and looking for bathroom towel bars, but refraining from buying anything, except for a couple montaditos at our favorite 100 Montaditos. And I came away satisfied that perhaps my red-letter day horror (no stores open!) may be a nightmare of the past.