Christmas Morning on the Plaza Mayor
You step out into the cold, clear light of a Madrid Christmas morning and the city is already awake. The great iron-and-glass stalls of the Plaza Mayor's Christmas market stand in rows beneath the arcades, their roofs strung with coloured bulbs, and the air carries the smell of roasting chestnuts, pine branches and sugar. The market here is the oldest and most famous in Spain, trading through the whole Christmas season, and on the 25th it opens for the crowds who come to buy figures for the belén — the nativity scene that sits in nearly every Spanish home. You will find carved clay figurines, the caganer and the caganera, miniature animals and whole tabletop landscapes, laid out stall after stall.
By midday the plaza is full of families, and the surrounding streets — Calle Mayor, Calle de Toledo, the Cava de San Miguel — are packed with people moving between the market and the church of San Miguel, whose Christmas fair sells food alongside the religious goods.
Midday: The Christmas Lottery, the Mass and the Roast
Christmas Day in Spain is not the day of the great lottery draw — that is El Gordo, the Sorteo Extraordinario de Navidad, drawn on 22 December each year, and by the 25th the winning numbers are already pasted in the windows of every lottery office. What the 25th itself brings is the religious heart of the season: the Mass of the Nativity, celebrated in churches across the city, with the cathedral of Santa María la Real de la Almudena, beside the Royal Palace, drawing the largest congregation.
The Christmas meal in Madrid is a long, late lunch, and the dishes are fixed by custom:
- Cochinillo asado — roast suckling pig, the speciality of Segovia but eaten across Madrid's restaurants, carved with the edge of a plate because the meat is that tender.
- Cordero asado — roast lamb, from the same Castilian tradition.
- Pavo trufado — turkey stuffed with truffles, the more modern centrepiece.
- Besugo al horno — baked sea bream, for those who keep fish on the table.
- Turrón and mazapán — the almond and honey sweets that fill the confectioners' windows from November, sold at the stalls of the Plaza Mayor and in the old shops of the centre.
Book your table well ahead: the good restaurants of the centre — around the Plaza Mayor, along the Cava Baja in La Latina, and in the streets off the Puerta del Sol — fill up weeks in advance for the Christmas lunch.
Afternoon: Lights, Shop Windows and the Paseo
When the meal ends, Madrid walks. The Christmas lights go up across the city in late November and stay until early January, and the great set-pieces are along Calle de Alcalá, the Gran Vía, the Puerta del Sol and the Plaza de Cibeles. The 25th is a day for taking them in slowly, on foot, with the shops dark but their windows lit — the department stores and jewellers of the Gran Vía and Calle de Preciados, the toy shops of the centre, the confectioners around the Puerta del Sol.
Walk from the Puerta del Sol up the Gran Vía to the Plaza de Cibeles, where the fountain and the Palacio de Cibeles are floodlit, then on into the Retiro, whose paths and lake are quiet on Christmas afternoon. If you want the city from above, the cable car over the Casa de Campo runs through the season and gives you the whole western skyline, the Royal Palace and the Sierra beyond.
Evening: Belenes, Carols and the Zambomba
The evening of the 25th belongs to the belén. Madrid has a long tradition of the nativity scene, and the finest are on public view through the season: the great belén of the Plaza Mayor market itself, the displays in churches across the centre, and the Belén del Príncipe at the Royal Palace, the historic court nativity that has been assembled for Spanish monarchs since the eighteenth century. The belén at the Casa de Correos on the Puerta del Sol is another of the city's regular Christmas installations.
For music, the season brings carols — villancicos — sung in churches and in the streets, and the zambomba, the Andalusian-style Christmas party of singing, tambourines and the friction drum that gives it its name, held in bars and cultural centres through December. The great concert halls, the Auditorio Nacional de Música and the Teatro Real, programme Christmas concerts and zarzuela through the season; check their calendars for what falls on the 25th itself. In the squares of La Latina and Lavapiés, the bars stay open late and the night runs on.
Beyond the Centre: La Cabalgata and the Season Around It
The 25th is the still point of a season that runs hard either side of it. On the evening of 5 January, the eve of Epiphany, Madrid holds its great Cabalgata de Reyes — the Three Kings' parade — when the Magi arrive by train at the station of Príncipe Pío and process through the streets to the Plaza de Cibeles and on to the Puerta del Sol, throwing sweets to the crowds. It is the biggest street party of the Madrid Christmas, and if your visit stretches past New Year you should not miss it.
New Year's Eve, Nochevieja, is taken in the Puerta del Sol, where the clock of the Casa de Correos strikes twelve and the crowd eats a grape with each chime — the twelve uvas de la suerte. Epiphany, 6 January, closes the season with the Roscón de Reyes, the ring-shaped sweet bread sold in every pastry shop and eaten at breakfast, and with the Kings' Day processions in the towns around the city.
For a day out from the centre, take the train north to Segovia, an hour away, where the aqueduct, the Alcázar and the roast suckling pig make a natural Christmas excursion, or south to Toledo, where the cathedral and the narrow streets are at their quietest in the winter light. Both are easy day trips and both keep the Christmas table you have been eating at all week.
Plan Around the 25th
Madrid on Christmas Day is a city of closed shops and open churches, of long lunches and long walks, of markets that trade through the holiday and a night that belongs to family and to the belén. Book your table and your hotel early, check the concert calendars of the Teatro Real and the Auditorio Nacional for the dates that fall in your week, and give yourself the days either side of the 25th — the Kings' parade on 5 January and the grapes in the Puerta del Sol on the 31st are worth arranging your trip around.