WITH tomorrow (Tuesday, December 8) being a national public holiday, expect everywhere except petrol stations and the designated 24-hour pharmacy in your town to be closed – although many bars and restaurants continue to trade on bank holidays, just as they do on Sundays, which is otherwise a non-working day in Spain.
Early December sometimes brings a long 'weekend' for workers, depending upon when the dates fall: December 6 is 'Constitution Day', marking the anniversary of the signing of Spain's Magna Carta which is considered to be when full democracy was restored, human rights enshrined in law and the lid put on any possible future risk of any other dictatorship, meaning the 36-year hell under General Franco could never legally happen again.
December 8 is a public holiday to mark the 'Immaculate Conception', and is recognised in several countries with an historic Catholic tradition, such as Spain, France, Malta and Ireland, whether or not it brings a total shutdown to the country.
When a public holiday falls on a Sunday, it is automatically written off, although Spain has a law in place that allows regions to move certain bank holidays to the Monday – provided they have not exceeded their limit of 14 'extra' days off a year.
Some bank holidays are considered 'non-transferable', meaning they can only be taken on the day they fall, and include Christmas Day, New Year's Day, the 'Three Kings' – the Epiphany, or January 6 – and Good Friday, although in the case of Easter, some regions take Maundy Thursday as a holiday and others take Easter Monday, but never both.
For Christmas, unlike in the UK where, if either Christmas Day, Boxing Day or New Year's Day falls on a Saturday or a Sunday – as was the case with 1999 and 2009, when they all did – the immediately-following working days are taken as holiday instead, Spain does not 'substitute' these if they land on a Sunday anyway; they are simply 'lost'.
Also, Boxing Day is not a public holiday in Spain, meaning any non-Spaniard from a country which does observe December 26 as a bank holiday will have to take it out of their annual leave and book it in advance if they want to continue with 'Christmas as usual'.
'Constitution Day' is 'transferable' in regions which have not already used up their 14-day-per-year allowance – this year, it was 'written off' in the Comunidad Valenciana, Cantabria, Galicia, Catalunya, the Basque Country and Castilla-La Mancha, but moved to today (Monday, December 7) everywhere else.
The 'Immaculate Conception' is not transferable, so has to be observed and cannot be substituted.
What opens over public holidays
In parts of the country designated 'tourism zones', a figure affecting individual towns rather than whole provinces or regions, shops and other customer-facing businesses are allowed to open on practically any day and whatever hours they please – but many towns 'awarded' this designation have actually appealed against it, claiming it would give large national chains an advantage over smaller traders who did not have the staff to open 365 days a year.
Read more at thinkSPAIN.com