The Plaza Mayor market has run since the nineteenth century and sells two categories of thing: everything needed for a belén — figures, cork bark, moss, miniature livestock — and an enormous quantity of practical jokes, wigs and joke noses, which are for Nochevieja and the Día de los Inocentes on 28 December, Spain's equivalent of April Fools.
No attendance figure is published.
The market runs to 31 December rather than to Christmas, which distinguishes it from the Catalan and northern European ones and reflects where the Spanish festive weight falls: Nochevieja and then Reyes on 6 January.
The square is also the collection point for the twelve grapes eaten at midnight on New Year's Eve, sold in pre-counted tins all month.
PlanningLate November to 31 December — it stays open to New Year's Eve, unlike most Spanish markets.