Presentation of the book: Winter peasant evenings in the Leonese area.

Past event

For centuries and documented since the Middle Ages, our peasants, throughout the long winter days and during the first hours of the night, until it was time to go to bed, gathered in the kitchen of a house, in the warmth of the fire, which brought together old men and old women, men and women, girls and boys (although the presence of the latter was frowned upon by the ecclesiastical hierarchy), to talk, sing and count, even pray, while the old women, girls and girls spun with the spindle and distaff, and the old men and boys did basketwork and other types of work.

Depending on the area, these winter evenings have been given different names. The filandón is the most widespread and popular today.

José Luis Puerto, in his book Winter country evenings in the Leonese countryside (2024), based on bibliographical, archival and fieldwork research, tackles and carries out a meticulous analysis of this ancient winter peasant institution, which has almost survived to the present day, from various complementary points of view: conceptual (definition and characteristics), literary, philological, based on customary law, ethnographic, bibliographical, as well as providing abundant data from his fieldwork carried out over several years.