Food Festivals

The Saffron Rose Festival

Over the last weekend in October, the town of Consuegra in Toledo, Castile-La Mancha, holds the Saffron Rose Festival, in honor of the flower that "is born at sunrise and dies at dusk" as sung in the Spanish zarzuela (operetta) of the same name.

The festival, held to coincide with the dates when the flowers are picked, includes local folklore displays, a gastronomic competition and the festival's most emblematic event: the Saffron Rose Picking competitions, in which participants have to extract the maximum possible amount of saffron in the shortest time and in the tidiest way.