Friday, 19th of March Fathers Day

In Spain , one of the most important festivities, is the ephemeris of Saint José. This day commemorates the life of Joseph, Mary’s husband and Jesus’s adoptive father, and due to this it also came to be known as Father's Day.

Nowadays in some regions, like Murcia, Galicia, País Vasco, Navarra and Valencia, it is considered as a work-free day. Only a few people know exactly why Spain chose this day to celebrate Father’s Day. In 1948, a teacher from Vallecas, named Manuela Vicente Ferrero, at the end of a class, was talking with two men and one of them said: “Everyone knows of a mother´s love for her children but not a father´s love: we have hearts too”.

The teacher decided to end this discrimination and chose Saint José’s day to celebrate fathers. On the 19th of March of that year, the fathers went to their children’s schools to take part in a mass in their honour, and then the children gave handmade presents to their fathers.

One year later Manuela, the teacher, wrote an article for the monthly newspaper ‘El Magisterio Español’ where she recounted the experience of the day and asked other teachers to do the same. The article was so successful, that the fathers that had participated in the celebration, wrote letters to the newspaper expressing their joy and emotion on that wonderful day.