Part of one of Spain’s most unusual Christmas collections has been exhibited in Madrid

Antonio Basanta, who has collected nativity scenes with his wife for several decades, owns almost 4,000 Christmas compositions from around the world. This winter, three of them can be seen in the Arganzuela, Retiro and Hortaleza neighbourhoods.

His hobby began in childhood with a simple nativity scene assembled piece by piece and, over time, became a lifelong project. Today, the collection includes tens of thousands of figures from more than 150 countries, from Latin America to Africa and Asia. Some pieces were created over several years; others arrived after real adventures: one of the nativity scenes from China took more than ten years to arrive because of bans on Christian symbols.

The scale of the collection long ago exceeded the limits of the home, so the nativity scenes are kept in a specially fitted-out space. Basanta himself acknowledges that rarity and price are not key for him, but rather the history and the material. He particularly appreciates nativity scenes with “living” details: rivers, human figures and scenes of everyday life.