Nosing about

We are heading for Arnedo, for reasons that will become clear tomorrow.  We are late.  Had we been here three days ago we would have met the Man with the Nose.  The Man with the Nose is a Catalan character whose nose grows bigger every day of the year till it is huge on 31st December.   La Rioja has variants on this legend   In Logroño the man with more eyes than days in the year goes on a Christmas parade and is said to be found near the station. ​In  Arnedo ,the legend of the man with as many noses as there are days in the year . However, since 1991, the Peña Lubumbas has been giving a very special form to this tradition, moving the legend to 1 January so that he really had the 365 noses that the children were looking for. On 1st January the man arrives in an old bus to the Puerta Munillo in Arnedo, dressed in a coat, suit and scarf and carrying a small suitcase. After greeting the numerous children gathered there he heads to the headquarters of the Peña Lubumbas to hand out sweets.





Arnedo sits near the start of a mountain range.  Apart from the usual Neolithics and Celtiberians the Romans seem to have made a town and fortified it.  The Visigoths lurked around a cave there and then the Arabs arrived.  The Muslims were removed and the Chrisitian kings arrived.  In 1264 the Crown of Castile took control.  Then there was the War of the Two Pedros the place was given to a French nobleman Bertrand du Guesclin.  He sold it for two grand to Pedro Fernandez de Velasco - a Castillian nobleman.




The town grew.  It made espadrilles, soap, pots and liquor.  Shoes became big.  I mean, very big.  Things related to shoes like rubber and cardboard flourished.  The population rose from 2330 in 1842 to 15,000 today. 




The castle stands above the town in the finest fighting fantasy fashion. It saw action in 1837 when it was fortified during the First Carlist War.  We must talk about Carlists some time.





We are passing something which we can look at.  Moron is a warehouse. It is part of grupomoron.  https://grupomoron.com/en  Camion said this three years ago.  ‘Well, very friendly and fast, we miss a bar in the industrial area’  Let us go to our first shoe factory shop.  Raquel Perez Shoes https://raquelperezshoes.com/ gets 4.8 stars from 743 reviews.  Tania reckoned ‘Very fast delivery, very good product quality, even better than I expected! Very satisfied!!! I take this opportunity to thank you for the service and good quality.’










 We will end the day popping into Lotto Sport Outlet.  It is an outdoor clothing shop.  Nobody has written much other than they don’t have bargains.  Who can say.  I urge you to visit at once.










































 

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