BarcelonaWith 500 figurines, 60,000 lights and a budget of 45,000 euros, the nativity scene at the headquarters of the Community of Madrid is the largest in the Spanish capital. This year’s has everything: from the Annunciation to the arrival of the Kings of the East, passing through a reproduction of the temple of Debod and the pyramids of Giza in the biblical episode of the flight to Egypt – and even a figure of Pope Francis. What this nativity scene does not have, unlike the one at Madrid City Hall, is a Spanish flag. However, this has not always been the case: there was a year when the 120 square meters of the installation appeared surrounded by a huge rojigualdaas is done with the birth of the Madrid council since 2019. All of this, however, was due to a misunderstanding led by the former president of the Community of Madrid Esperanza Aguirre.
It was 2004 and Aguirre went to visit the nativity scene, which had just been inaugurated. After taking a look at the buildings of the installation, among desert areas and kilos of moss, he commented that he missed “the flag”. At least, that’s what the officials of the Community of Madrid understood, who rushed to buy several meters of fabric with a double red and a yellow stripe to cover the entire perimeter.
However, when the president found the base of the nativity scene covered with the state flag, she immediately asked for an explanation. No one understood his strangeness: the workers told him that they had merely followed his orders. At that time, she clarified that what she had missed was not “the flag”, but the figure of the washing machine that is usually placed in the rivers of the cribs (in Spanish, the washerwoman). History is a recurring theme every time the holidays approach the offices of the Madrid administration: “I don’t know if it’s anecdote or legend, but it’s been a comment since time immemorial,” a source who arrived at the Post Office, seat of the regional government, tells ARA more than ten years later –Andrea Zamorano reports.
The fight with Ruiz-Gallardón
The story was told a few years later by Aguirre herself during the inauguration of the nativity scene in 2007, as picked up by the local press present. That year he didn’t even have time to take a walk to check the composition, in charge of the nativity scene association. That day the manger was left without Baby Jesus: Aguirre demanded that they take him out. First, he said, because it was an inconsistency that it appeared before December 24, the day of Jesus’ birth. And, secondly, because the figure had an “excessive” size, closed eyes and “painted eyebrows”. The vice president of the nativity scene association was willing to replace it with a smaller one after Christmas Eve.
Nativity inspections became a regular Aguirre practice when the Christmas dates arrived. The following year, in 2008, he also tried to remove the Baby Jesus from the stable. It was found, however, that the figurine was attached to that of the Virgin Mary, so that it was not possible to remove it; an artistic gamble which the Pessebrists maintained had in no way been “intentional”.
Another anecdote recorded in the journalistic chronicles is the satisfaction that Aguirre had when one of the visitors said that she liked the Community of Madrid’s nativity scene more than the City Hall’s, in Cibeles. Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón was then in charge, Aguirre’s great political enemy within the PP. In fact, it was Ruiz-Gallardón who commissioned a 200-piece nativity scene for the council in 2004. Aguirre did not want to be left behind (the one she ordered to make had 300) and, in addition, the following year he gave Princess Elionor a complete nativity scene, from the Community of Madrid.
