Winter “castañas”

In the northern part of Spain, the closer you were to France, the colder it got in winter, in some cases brutally cold, with temperatures in the 20s and 30s with strong winds blowing across the city. 

As winter approached, one would see, scattered all over the down town area and in the parks, older men and women with calloused fingers blackened with ash from picking up the roasted chestnuts (castaña in Spanish) out of the roasting pans to place them into brown paper or newspaper funnels.

Chestnuts - Castañas in Spanish - Roasting on a Cold Winter Day

For 50 pesetas (Spanish currency back before the Euro), roughly 35 US cents, you could buy a full paper funnel filled with about 15 to 20 roasted chestnuts. 

We would walk from our apartment to the downtown area in Zaragoza to find a street vendor that sold them.  The vendors would be bundled up with sweaters, jackets, wool scarfs and black gloves with the finger tips cut out of them. 

The vendors would stand close to the fire roasting the chestnuts to keep warm.  You could see numerous burn marks and holes in their jackets and pants due to flying embers popping out of the roasting rack.   

Holding the funnel of chestnuts was the goal of all of my family members, the intent being to keep your hands warm, so the paper funnel would shift hands amongst all of us until they were all consumed, which would just about be the time we would arrive at our destination, whether it was the movie house or dinner at some wonderful corner restaurant.