The capital's Gran Vía will become a "winter garden" at Christmas with poinsettias, holly and mistletoe in the luminaries, which will be lit on November 23 with the starting signal from Puerta del Sol.
Thus, the Madrid City Council, through the Works and Equipment area, will incorporate more than a dozen new features to this year's Christmas lighting, one of the most notable being the new design of Gran Vía, as sources have confirmed. municipal.
In this way, Easter flowers, cyclamens, winter cacti, amaryllis, butcher's broom, holly, mistletoe and strawberry trees will fill this street from the Plaza de España towards the Retiro with color. The species chosen for Christmas lighting are more or less directly related to Christmas.
100% of the almost 12 million bulbs for Christmas lights (11.8) are high-efficiency LED types and the energy cost of the lighting is assumed by the winning company.
In total, the streets of the capital will be decorated with 6,600 chains, 115 cherry trees and eleven large luminous fir trees, in addition to other motifs. The traditional figurative nativity scenes will also be maintained at historic gates of the city such as those of Alcalá, Toledo or San Vicente, as well as at the entrances to the Plaza Mayor.
Likewise, Madrid residents and visitors will be able to contemplate the large luminous menina of the Paseo del Prado, the giant birth of Columbus or the now traditional ball, which on this occasion will be located in Plaza de España next to the Sabatini Gardens.
A team of more than 50 workers works on the installation of the capital's Christmas lighting during the approximately three months that the assembly of the lights lasts (from mid-August to mid-November). For this, 140 heavy material transport trucks and 25 light cranes are used.
