Pastimes that have disappeared in Spain

Many popular forms of entertainment in Spain have disappeared or become a rare sight, from open-air summer cinemas in many villages to table football in every bar and neighbourhood festivities with live bands. Paper cut-outs and collecting cards, newsstand comics and children’s street games have also become less common.

Open-air summer cinema

An outdoor screen, plastic chairs and sunflower seeds. A few still survive, but you no longer find one in every village. We explore this in cinema and television.

Paper pastimes and the newsstand

Paper cut-outs, comics, collecting cards and five-peseta novels. The newsstand was the ultimate shop for children’s entertainment.

Street games

Chapas (bottle-cap games), el pañuelo (the handkerchief game), comba (skipping) and canicas (marbles). We revisit them in playground games that have disappeared.

What lives on

The deck of cards. It has moved from the bar to the screen, but it is still here. We explain this in how card games survive. Some board games, though, really have been lost: board games that have disappeared.