Covilhã celebrates Christmas with giant cake, gastronomy and live art

O mega cake Shared snow and a gastronomic contest to choose the “Christmas Stars”, stand out in this year’s program of Christmas with Art, in Covilhã, which was presented today by the House.

The motto for the celebration that will take place from 1 December to 10 January 2027 is “celebrate Christmas with a community program, with the community and for the community”.

And it is the community that makes the human frame that on December 1st receives in the civic center Santa and watches the lights on, tasting a piece of Nevão, the cake in the form of triangulus, covered with white powder sugar, referring to the snow-covered saw.

Regina Gouveia, Councillor of Culture of the Municipality of Covilhã (district of Castelo Branco), explains to the agency Lusa that the square of the Municipality is the main nucleus of this “Natal with Art”, but the activities also occur in other areas of the city and the county, such as the Archives and the Municipal Library, the Gallery António Lopes, the museums of Covilhã and Arte Sacra, the parishes and the hotels and restaurants of the Penhas da Saúde, crossing with the network program of the Mountain Villages, “The Christmas Star”, which has an opening scheduled for December 5, in the Penhas da Saúde.

The name “Christmas Star” is also given to the gastronomic contest, one of this year’s novelties, in which restaurants, hotels, bakeries and pastry shops in the county are challenged to create a star-shaped delicacy, but, in addition to the originality, “the use of local, endogenous and seasonal products, especially from autumn and winter, is mandatory, and can present each of them up to two proposals, one sweet and one salt”. This activity has the partnership of Cherovia and Pastel de Sauço da Covilhã.

Doing justice to UNESCO's Creative City distinction for Design, the various forms of art (painting, sculpture and other types of craftsmanship) “will not only be exposed, because artists and craftsmen will be in various spaces to create and produce live, telling Christmas stories, or shaping Christmas in clay and wool”.

Two of the mountain hotels will have a show of cheese, one of them, and of dogs Serra da Estrela, the other.

“ We have maintained most of the initiatives we set up last year, but we have added some others, such as the competition, whose results will be presented at two times, one in the municipal market and the other in the Health Penhas. But we also launched the new Mercadinho das Freguesias”.

In Penhas da Saúde, this year with the partnership of the motorcycle group Lobos da Neve, “it will be made available to hotel guests, free of charge, sleigh rides, but with a special sled, pulled by a motorcycle”.

The groups of schools also continue to participate, once again being assigned a roundabout to decorate, under the initiative “Rotundas com Arte”.

The program also includes a supportive lunch and a re-use of toys, “Art of giving and receiving – Toys that play more”, observation of stars in the Penhas da Saúde, shows at the Municipal Theatre and in the churches of the county, also maintaining the initiative “Christmas for All”, in which the Associação Cultural da Beira Interior brings Christmas songs to homes and day centers.