Día de la Cruz

At our friends' cortijo (cottage house)

Every year on the 3rd of May, the city of Baza (and other cities, including Granada & Cordoba) celebrate the day of the cross.  Neighborhood associations, bars, restaurants and even individuals set up intricate crosses in their patios for people to see.  I don't know anything about the history of it, or why exactly they celebrate it, but I know it is a pretty big deal.

Each cross has its own personality and many are accompanied by a bar.  What people do on the day of the cross is go from cross to cross to take a look, have a drink and a pincho or donate some change to the group who made it.  In Baza, I saw many crosses and took note of their characteristics.  There was one made of almonds, another made of bottle caps, wine boxes, flowers and many other things.  I'll let the photos do the talking...

At the alcohol & drug addiction center

The group of ladies on the right are the one who put this one together.

La casa de Matilde

Made of flowers.  This was made by the San Juan neighborhood association,
which is the neighborhood that I live in.

All of the decoration is made of bottle caps
(La casa de Pilar)
I think she won the contest this year and it was her first time participating.
She seems like a really nice lady :)

Wine boxes

Almonds

A private primary school in town

Tissue paper 

The classic Día de la Cruz food.  You buy a beer, soda or tinto de verano and order a pincho, which is pork marinated in delicious spices and cooked on a stick, or a small sandwich with chorizo, pork, blood sausage or bacon.

Eating pinchos!

If you look closely in some of the photos, you will see an apple with scissors stuck into it.  There is always an apple or pear with scissors in it at the bottom of the crosses.  It took explanations from three different people to finally understand what it meant.

The reason there is an apple or pear is because when everybody looks at the crosses they analyze what they like, don't like, compare it to others, etc...  The word "pear" in Spanish is "pera" which is kind of close to the word "pero" which means "but."  Basically the apple is there so that people do not speak badly about the cross.  Whenever people compare the crosses, they say things like, "I like this cross butttttttt (peroooooo) it doesn't have blah, blah, blah..."  The scissors are there to cut the "pero" so that each cross is appreciated individually and not compared to the rest.  Interesting stuff.