It does not matter that half of Spain (and the other half too) is burning, the world remains attentive to what is happening at the Olympic Games and the logic that reigns in homes and offices is that of the summer holidays. Vigo is clear that the priority is Christmas. And that is how it was staged by the mayor, Abel Caballero, who presided over the official start of the installation of Christmas lights today, on July 30, when the thermometer showed 30 degrees.

Christmas decorations under the summer sun.

No sooner said than done. It’s not new, but that doesn’t make it any less surprising. In an interview with RTVE at the beginning of the month, Abel Caballero announced that the installation of Christmas lights in Vigo would begin in mid-summer, “in July or August.” And so it did. Today, July 30, with the mercury at 30 degrees and full sun, the mayor began work on putting up the decorations.

And to make it clear, the Knight himself posed in the middle of Príncipe Street, in the center of the city, with workers and some of the garlands that will be hung on the streets. “Today we start the installation of the Christmas lights.”

“67 cities in Spain”. The mingling of Christmas lights with tourists in sandals and umbrellas may come as a shock, but Caballero justified Vigo’s rush with an important fact: in Vigo, he noted, the streets were decorated “some of them more than a kilometre”, which is equivalent to the calculations they made for dozens and dozens of municipalities. “There are 67 cities in Spain. So we have to start now,” insisted the first mayor, in front of a group of journalists, aware that the work begins “when half, half or all of Spain is roasting in the sun”.

One tree to rule them allThe start of the Christmas display wasn’t the only blow for Caballero, who took advantage of the event to unveil one of the highlights that Vigo will offer this holiday season: an XXL lighted tree. And XXL can be taken in the most literal sense of the phrase. Caballero assures us that the tree will be around 50 meters tall, making it “the tallest giant tree in the world.”

Last Christmas, the city built a massive 44m conical structure with a 19m diameter star, which it declared at the time was “the largest tree in human history on the planet”.

Deployment of large numbers. The meter of the tree or the number of streets decorated are not the only figures that make Caballero show her chest to the press. The first mayor reminded that Vigo’s 420 streets and squares will be decorated with “about 4,000 garlands and decorative light objects”, 2,500 lighted trees and 11.5 million LEDs. “Whoever wants to compete must say so.”

“When will Christmas be? As usual, Vigo will celebrate the beginning of Christmas sometime in November, I will say that, but today we start with the installation of Christmas motifs”, explained Caballero, People also visit the city in the summer months. One of the points that the city looks at with the most interest due to its proximity is the north of Portugal.

Have questions about LED lights? Yes and no. Behind Vigo’s apparent rush to put up Christmas decorations, or Caballero’s rhetoric, lies something much more important: the work that the holidays require and the ability to attract visitors between November and January, when not so long ago there was little activity in Vigo hotels. The data is telling. In December 2012, INE counted 18,500 travelers in the city’s hotel establishments, while in 2022 that number was already much higher: close to 58,000. And growing.

The “war” of lights. Abel Caballero even boasts much higher figures. According to data from mobile phones, the last Christmas campaign attracted 5.3 million tourists to Vigo, equivalent to 17.6 times the city’s population and 1,000 times the number of hotel beds the city has in December, according to INE.

In any case, Christmas tourism has become such an appetizing candy that beyond Vigo, cities like Badalona or Madrid, which have competed for years on things like displaying lights and trees, are also competing for it.

Pictures | Vigo City Council

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