November 2, 2012

When we first moved to Spain 12 years ago, Halloween passed by without us seeing a witch, ghost or monster or having “trick or treat” ers at our doorstep.

However in the last few years its popularity has gained momentum.

This is probably due to the growth in foreign residents in Manilva (40% of Manilva’s population are from a different country) and the influence of American and British television, but also because the Spanish love any excuse for a party!

This year has been the best Halloween in Spain yet.  When we heard that Manilva Town Hall Foreigners department were organising a Halloween party at Duquesa Castle (El Castillo de la Duquesa), we decided to invite some English and Spanish friends to meet at the Halloween Party at the castle and then when it got dark walk back to our house “trick or treat” ing on the way.

The headless horseman of La Duquesa!

When we arrived at the castle in La Duquesa I couldn’t believe my eyes at how many people had made the effort and dressed up.  The castle was full up with hundreds of witches, ghouls and monsters wandering around scaring each other.

Halloween monsters with the Mayoress of Manilva, Antonia Muñoz and councillors for the Foreign Residents Department,  Deigo Urieta and Valentina Radu

When the party was over and it was dark we made our way back home stopping at the urbanisations next to La Duquesa Golf Course on the way to “trick or treat”.

We knocked on the first few doors at Jardines del Golf and didn’t get a response.  The kids were starting to get a bit disappointed but luckily the next house we called at there was someone there and they gave them some sweets to share.  This was the boost they needed and they excitedly moved on to the next houses hoping that someone would answer.  Of about 50 houses in Jardines del Golf only 3 answered but the ones that did were generous.

High on sweets and adrenalin we decided to move on to the next urbanisation, Villas del Golf, to see what response we would get there.

Thankfully the residents of Villas del Golf were very welcoming and generous and weren’t overwhelmed by the sight of lots of little monsters at their doorstep.  The icing on the cake was the lovely couple at Villas del Golf who had hoped we would come as we had “trick or treated” there last year.  They had decorated their house with bats and pumpkins and had gone to the trouble of making 12 orange pouches full of sweets to give to each child.  The only problem was there was only 6 kids last year and this year the number had grown to 20 kids!  But that didn’t matter, they went in and got more sweets so that no child was left out.  My Spanish friends were amazed at their thoughtfulness and generosity and commented on how civilised the process was with them handing each child some sweets one by one.  She said the Spanish would just chuck the sweets out of a window for the kids to grab as many as they can – like they do at 3 kings.

Content with the amount of sweets collected we finished the evening off back at my house which we had had fun decorating as a haunted house earlier that day.  The kids ran off the rest of the sweet fuelled energy playing games in the garden.  After pizza and pumpkin ice-cream cake courtesy of Mercadona everyone left happy (including my kids to sleepovers) and I was left happy that a good time had been had by all.