Neither the tree in Vigo, nor the one in Badalona. Barcelona plays in another league: "We don't race, we don't need to; we don't compare ourselves to other cities, we don't make the tree the tallest or the shortest", concluded Jaume Collboni. Barcelona has the Christmas Festival, with more than 300 proposals for two weeks (from December 16 to 29), a large-format show in Passeig de Gràcia as a prelude to the lighting and a monumental audiovisual installation in the Plaça Universitat which will project laser beams into the sky and which will be visible from all over the city.
This year, the Christmas Festival has an investment of 1.3 million euros, plus the 2.9 that have been allocated to lighting and subsidies to commercial areas (the cavalcade comes under another heading). "It's an invitation to come and discover the city. We will recover the Barcelona way of celebrating Christmas, we will deploy all the potential that the city has, freedom, civility, respect", said the mayor yesterday at the presentation of the program, which will also reach the ten districts and the commercial axes and the markets with the Sounds of Christmas. On Passeig de Gràcia there will be a special program to celebrate the bicentenary.
All activities will be open and free. "It is a distinctly cultural proposal, with absolute complicity with the commercial and economic axis", added Oriol Martí, director of programming and new manager of the Institut de cultura de Barcelona (Icub). The festival will pivot mainly in Plaça Catalunya, where the big stage will be installed again, and on the outer perimeter, the Responsible Consumption and Social and Solidarity Economy Fair will be held.
The daily program in Plaça Catalunya will have three sections: in the morning, more familiar with activities and workshops; in the afternoon, which will start with a daily session by Miqui Puig and a performance by The Gramophone All Stars Big Band and will continue with more dance, circus or tightrope walking performances and then music, giving wings to local artists such as Mazoni, Tarquim, Saphie Wells, Alba Armengou, La Maria and Núria Graham.
Every day, at eight in the evening, the group Señor Serrano will be in charge of closing the programming in Plaça Catalunya, with a large-format show that will take place around a table, "where there is excitement and joy , but also disagreement... Based on the spirit of the company, we wanted to explain this complexity...", said Paula Viteri. The table will present an apparently harmonious family with lots of music and a large format.
The other big bet of the Christmas Festival will be the digital arts stage in Plaça Universitat. The original proposal for Sónar, which is celebrating its 30th anniversary, was developed by Glassworks with sound accompaniment by Tarta Relena. It is a large cylindrical piece of three meters in height and seven in perimeter, named Analema, which will project light, which will simultaneously react to light and which at night will cast light rays vertically.
The first edition of the Christmas Festival will be the large-format show that will be released on the afternoon of November 23 as a prelude to the lighting of lights throughout the city. The Astronòmica show is inspired by the figure of the Barcelona scientist Assumpció Català, with a visual tale with circus, music, dance and light by Obskené. For the first time, a new section of Passeig Sant Joan (between the section of Avinguda de Vilanova and Gran Via) will be illuminated. The design was carried out by the Barcelona studio Borsmind.
Beyond the race over the size of the Christmas trees, this year the one in Plaça Sant Jaume will be made up of a set of small and medium-sized firs (between 2 and 4.5 meters), mounted on a metal structure lica, which will form a large and unusual perfect and very thick Christmas tree that will reach 15 meters and which has been dubbed the "fir of firs". All the trees come from nurseries of sustainable cultivation in Sant Hilari Sacalm.
Avinguda Maria Cristina will be the setting for the year-end show - in charge of the Groupe F company and the direction of Christophe Berthonneau -, which will offer music, pyrotechnics, a monumental scenography and lots of technological innovation.
However, the drought decree will prevent the use of the Magical Fountain of Montjuïc, which remains without water.
More news: the greeting to the Kings of the Orient, who will arrive again aboard the Pailebot Santa Eulàlia, will take place this year, and on the occasion of the America's Cup, from the beaches of Somorrostro and the Barceloneta, in the Gas breakwater area.
