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Barcelona will renew its Christmas lights to encourage commerce

Barcelona will look this Christmas like it never did. The town hall will illuminate for the first time the Catalonian square, will re-decorate the street Balmes, will repeat the experiences of last year in Urquinaona and Via Laietana… and it will also light the facades of all the markets in the city! and above, and here lies the main novelty of this new and surprising municipal policy, the City Council will really work side by side with the merchants so that the city offers the passers-by a show with a little coherence, with a little bit of intention, with a bit of art … and not the already traditional patch on which the shopkeepers of each vial hang the leds as good as they can and God makes them understand. Up to 16 trade associations have already joined the new municipal initiative. We are talking about half of those that illuminated their axes last year.



The municipal government is reviewing the entire organization of the ornamentation of the streets from the city. And the town hall made public yesterday the announcement of the hiring of the design, rental and installation of Christmas decorations for the public space during the upcoming holidays. There are a dozen lots. The envelopes with the companies’ proposals will be opened in July and the award will be made in September. In truth, this public contest has been brewing since the beginning of the mandate, but it will come to materialize in a moment of maximum importance.


“We all need a little Christmas spirit,” says the mayor of Commerce, “it will be a special holiday”

The next Christmas and the celebration after next year’s edition of the Mobile World Congress will be crucial for the Barcelona trade. Either they consolidate the apex of the long-awaited vee of economic recovery or they end up defenestrating so many merchants and restaurateurs who are currently struggling hard to survive and not drown in this nightmare. Municipal spending on lights will go from around a million euros to over 1,300,000. In any case, it is a contained revolution: the theme of the new Christmas lights will be very neutral so as not to fuel the controversies that will surely generate, will revolve around very common values, such as social cohesion, coexistence and Proximity, and it is clear that the City Council rules out the possibility that they are visible from the Moon: the Catalan capital will not try to snatch any title from Vigo, Malaga or Madrid, the three towns lately most eager to dazzle the world. Everything will be very moderate and weighted, the sea of ​​Barcelona. No one will have to wear sunglasses on their walk. The specification of the technical clauses for the award of the contract indicates that the proposals that exalt the Mediterranean culture and that use “modern, abstract or figurative motifs”, more focused on aesthetic quality than on symbolism, will get more points.



The blessed Fum fum and Nyam nyam have already been repeating themselves for six years on the Gran Via. Even children are sick of seeing it. The idea is that the street lights really surprise their own and strangers and stop remembering in a somewhat pitiful way television series about the daily life of other decades. One of the clearest determinations of the socialist councilors of the Mayor Colau’s executive facing this mandate was and is to put an end to the sad and dull aspect of the city in such marked parties. The common people still find it hard to gut their heart to invite citizens to consume, but little by little they open up to other approaches. The first changes did not take place last parties because the public contracts they require are so complex that the City Council did not have time to process them.

“We want Barcelona to shine again and thus contribute to the reactivation of its trade,” says the councilor for Commerce, the socialist Montserrat Ballarín. Improving Christmas lighting was already among our goals, but the circumstances are making this will more important than ever. We are convinced that the new lighting will not only encourage Barcelona residents to visit its commercial hubs, it will also attract many residents of the metropolitan area and the rest of Catalonia. And we hope that a year later it will convince many foreign visitors that in 2021 it will help culminate the city’s tourist recovery. Also, I think we all need a little Christmas spirit. Family reunions, reunions and also absences will be very significant next Christmas. Everything will be very special. ”



The City Council does not want to liquidate at a stroke the co-financing system in force since the times of Mayor Hereu. It is true that the new modes open to private sponsorship are making it easier for the urban centers of many towns to present Hollywood shows, but it is also true that none of them pamper as much local commerce as Barcelona does, it illuminates so many neighborhoods and peripheral areas. The merchant associations will continue to pay half of the costs of lighting their streets, but all those who decide to join the municipal initiative the City Council will be responsible for the installation of the decorations.

In this way the city will be able to get rid of what is already known as the Diagonal curse. Two years ago the avenue ran out of lights at the last moment because the company in charge of the installation went bankrupt, and last year a good part of the decorations were left in a warehouse for similar reasons. So it is not surprising that half of the associations that last year asked for subsidies from the City Council to light their streets have already taken advantage of this new (even more) shared management system, the case of the Clot, Horta, Poblenou merchants … and also from El Born, Gòtic, Gràcia … Many others are also interested, but they have already committed to other suppliers.



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