Christmas brings out all sorts of nice customs and traditions in Spain and with it, in Mallorca.

One of the significant Christmas traditions is the all important Belén, which is a nativity scene, or crib. You will find a Belén in every single Mallorcan family home, in  most shop window displays, in all parish churches, in Palma’s townhall and in nearly every other place of public life (schools, public libraries, you name it). Some of those places put the Belén on display at about this time, in full gear, whereas others leave the baby Jesus out for the time being and only place it after December 24th.

It is nice to adapt to this Mallorcan tradition and create a D-I-Y-Belén in your own house (certainly so, if you have younger children or grandchildren). You can buy the little figurines for your own Belén from a Christmas stall in Palma’s Plaza Mayor, which is where I took the photo above.

The photo was taken in Palma de Mallorca, Spain. The date: December 13th, 2007. The time was 10:47:44.