Spain
participants
The main objective of this tour was to show the foreign students that come into our city an unknown side of the Christmas traditions in Spain. Although Christmas is celebrated worldwide, each country has their own different traditions. In Spain we have Nativity Scenes where the image of the birth of Jesus is represented through delicate elaborated figurines of different art styles, materials. etcetera...
Valladolid happens to have one of the most unique ones in the country, where many of them are exposed to the public. Therefore, we organize this activity with the association that unites congregations who own many of this nativity’s scenes in order to present this unique side of the Spanish Christmas culture and allow the students to immerse themselves onto it.
This activity has already been done by ESN Valladolid for the past few years during Christmas time with the same organization, JOHC. It is done every year because the Nativity Scenes are always put up around the city during Christmas time, the collection that different churches and associations put are well-known around the country for its distinctive beauty. Moreover, Erasmus Students are very eager to find out more about the unique Spanish traditions for Christmas, therefore it is a high demanded activity that we always make sure to realize.
In this activity, we gather all the international students who attend in a square of the city and start from there the tour. Along with JOHC, the other association that we collaborate with, we do some stops around the city to enjoy the different nativity scenes. In each of them, we prepare a short explanation about what we are seeing: the characters, the landscape, the different moments... After finishing the activity, we take a short time to reflect on what we just saw and afterwards, we go for a coffee together.
