On the evening of 5 January, in essentially every town in Spain, the Three Kings arrive in procession — on floats, on horseback, in Alcoy famously on camels up a staircase — and throw several tonnes of boiled sweets into the crowd. Children leave shoes out that night and find presents on the morning of the sixth.
The modern cabalgata is dated to Alcoy in 1866, which claims the first organised version, and Madrid and Barcelona now stage the largest.
No national attendance figure is published and the dispersed format defeats one.
The planning fact a visitor most often misses is that this, not Christmas Day, is the pivot of the Spanish festive season. Shops stay open late on the fifth, the sixth is a public holiday on which almost nothing operates, and the roscón de Reyes is eaten that morning with a figurine and a dried bean hidden inside.
PlanningFixed on the evening of 5 January, everywhere at once — and 6 January is the holiday, not 25 December.