The Christmas menu in my boyfriend’s family home in the south of Spain consists mainly of mariscos (seafood). The star dish is the gamba roja – large red prawns. The proper way to cook it is with sea water. The problem is getting the sea water out of the sea! Their house is on the beach, but the thought of getting knee high into the sea in December shocks everyone in the family (as it is assumed one will get a cold immediately), and this task builds up as the big challenge of Christmas day.
As someone who comes from a country with proper winter, it was understood that the cold will not affect me, and I bravely assumed the task the first Christmas I spent there. Now it is always up to me to make sure there is sea water for the gamba roja!
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I do find this sort of thing funny, as an Englishman living in the Jalon Valley, Alicante, who has spent nights sleeping in an igloo at -30 outside.
I often get strange looks when walking around in a t-shirt and shorts in January!
Maybe you have read The Shadow of the Wind / La Sombra del Viento by Carlos Ruiz Zafon? I was impressed that one of the characters had come to Barcelona from Toledo and found it cold and miserable. It’s all a question of perspective isn’t it?
for me it´s very funny, because this couples the diferent contries have to change and meet new customs and tradition, is very entertaining and sometimes can be a problem.
for example I have an aunt, she her husband is swiss and she is costa rican, they are a good couple, but have had to change for example she speak german and he spanish, the food is totaly diferent and the climate in both countries, but the love is crazy