Every year Barcelona embraces the Christmas spirit with a delightful Christmas Market - ‘Fira de Santa Llúcia’ - under the stunning Gothic architecture of La Seu, Barcelona’s 13th Century Cathedral. Why not take a look? Two night breaks staying at the five star Princesa Sofia Gran Hotel in Barcelona costs from €200pp (approx £139pp) during December based on two sharing on a B&B basis.

Visitors to the 300+ open-air stalls of the Christmas Market will find an array of seasonal goodies and handmade gifts. There are also musical parades, exhibitions and a hugely popular life-size nativity scene held at Plaça Sant Jaume.

One such gift, taken from Catalan mythology, is the caga tió - a pooping log, which usually comes dressed with a traditional Catalan hat and painted smiley face. It is customary to give him sweets to ‘eat’ beginning on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception (December 8) and then to cover him in a blanket. On Christmas morning the children order the log to excrete the sweets whilst singing songs and beating it with sticks. When the blanket is finally removed, the tió has dutifully expelled the sweets!

Also hugely popular purchases include the figurines for pessebres (nativity dioramas). The most popular of all is the caganer, a small squatting man usually dressed as a peasant farmer but with his pants down and a stream of excrement connecting his bare buttocks to the earth. It is generally believed that he sprang from the Catalan philosophy of "giving back to the earth what one takes from it." The artist Joan Miró placed him in La Granja (The Farm), one of his most famous works that is on display at Barcelona's Miró Foundation.

The Betlem Church on Les Ramblas holds an exhibition of the figurines throughout the month and a life-size one is constructed outside the city hall in the Plaça Sant Jaume.

Flights to Barcelona are available from almost all the UK's regional airports as well as Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted and Luton.