Quince años

The fiesta de quince años (also fiesta de quinceañera, quince años and quince) is a celebration of a girl's fifteenth birthday with cultural roots in Latin America but celebrated throughout the Americas. The girl celebrating the birthday is a quinceañera (Spanish pronunciation: [kinseaˈɲeɾa]; feminine form of "fifteen-year-old"). In English, quinceañera is also used to refer to the celebrations associated with the birthday (in Spanish it continues to refer to only the girl).

This birthday is celebrated differently from any other as it marks the transition from childhood to young womanhood. Historically, in the years prior to their fifteenth birthdays, girls were taught to cook, weave, and about childbearing by the elder women in their communities in preparation for their expected lives as wives. The celebrations today vary significantly across countries; celebrations in some countries, for example, have taken on more religious overtones than in others.

In Brazil, a Portuguese-speaking country, the same celebration is called festa de debutantes, baile de debutante or festa de quinze anos. In the French Caribbean and French Guiana, it is called fête des quinze ans. The grandest parties are comparable to the debutante balls formerly found in the United Kingdom and the United States. The quinceañera is celebrated according to their national traditions by many Latino Americans in the United States.

In the past, parallel customs could be found in the Iberian Peninsula and France, and unlike the rest of Spanish America, the festivity became somewhat uncommon in Chile. The custom remains strongest in its likely country of introduction, Mexico. In Spanish, "Quinceañera" literally means "Fifteen-year-old female". In English, primarily in the United States, the term is used (most often by non-Latinos) to refer to the celebration; this is not the case in Latin American countries, where only the girl, and never the celebration, is referred to as quinceañera.

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