Sunday, July 12, 2026

X is for Xixón, Y is for Yacimiento, and Z is for Zoriontsuak

 Xixón (in Asturian), Gijón (in Spanish) is the largest city and municipality of the autonomous community of Asturias in northwest Spain.

This stamp celebrates the Gijón/Xixón International Film Festival, which originated in 1963. Link to the whole stamp sheet, which was issued. in 2019.

Yacimiento can be a deposit, as in natural resources (oil, gold, etc), or, as in this case, a site, referring to archeological finds. This stamp, issued in 2024, shows 2500-year-old sculptures of Tartessian faces found at Casas del Turuñuelo, located in Guareña in the Spanish province of Barajoz. You can read more at the wikipedia entry.



Zoriontsuak translates to happiness, as seen on this 2025 Christmas stamp. Eguberri zoriontsuak is Basque for merry Christmas (happy Christmas in also common in the UK and Commonwealth nations). 

I think this is the first A-Z I managed to complete! As Eva guessed earlier in this run, I was aiming for all the letters to represent Spanish words - I didn't quite manage that, with a few coming from other languages spoken in Spain. There was also the Flemish koning - not many words begin with k in Spanish, and I didn't find any stamps celebrating the metric system's kilometers or kilograms :)

In the end the common thread of this A-Z was stamps sent by Eva, with 26 non-English words. Huge thanks to Eva for all the interesting stamps she sends me!

For more X, Y, Z stamps, explore the links at See it on a Postcard

16 comments:

  1. You rescued an old one! I like this design, and the bold choice of colours :)

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    1. Yes, X is from the Before Times :)

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    2. I'm impressed you managed to stick to a topic, too. And even learned words in Basque and Asturian!

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    3. Thanks again for the variety of stamps you send

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  2. I enjoyed the series. Well done.

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    1. Thanks! It was a fun challenge to put together, a (mostly) themed set

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  3. Kudos to you on your alphabetical achievement. I don't think I have any metric system stamps, there must be some out there somewhere.

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    1. Thanks, Joy. I'm sure there are, I haven't received any that I can think of

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  4. Great post! Great stamps! I love the first one with that eye staring..... I'm impressed you were able to find so many Spanish stamps representing words for this A to Z.

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    1. Learning Spanish, one word a week ;)

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    2. And very useful words, like "quebrantahuesos" :D

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    3. You never know when that will come in handy!

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  5. It is so helpful to have words on stamps - no matter the language!

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  6. I enjoyed them all. Nice to have found an X!

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