The Christmas lighting issue has gotten out of hand. Like the tiles of ancient floods which mark on street maps the height reached by the wild waters of the river, it is appropriate to underline how far the colored lights reached each year and to make the … comparison to discover that every Christmas, the bar is set higher.
Let’s avoid adjectives because it is difficult for the reader and the author to agree on personal tastes. And we know that, depending on taste, colors. Thus, the Christmas lighting of this 2025 offers a chromatic and volumetric palette so varied that everyone can choose the one they prefer to be happy. There is a choice: those who thirst for religious motifs can stay on Avenida de los Reyes Católicos with this luminous portal stretched, between arabesques, from one side of the street to the other.
Or the the greatest luminous mystery in Spain (a Saint Joseph almost ten meters high) planted in front of the baroque facade of San Telmo, as if there were no other place. Everything is to participate in this absurd race where most Spanish cities are committed to turning on the lights earlier, to having what is bigger, bigger, with more bulbs, more wacky or more shocking. But the most. This is the measure of Christmas lighting: it is no longer enough to decorate the streets to create that special atmosphere that encourages consumption, but it must enter the record books with a beer name.
In Seville, in addition to the largest nativity scene in Spain, we can boast (if that) the most boring Christmas decoration for citizens. Not for nothing, but because planting trees in the Constitution Avenue prevents the tram from operating normally until its terminal stop in Plaza Nueva, almost two months between assembly, operation and dismantling. And everyone is so happy, apparently. What we see is the lamentable state of the floor of the avenue, which emerges full of stains, potholes and dislocated tiles with so much light to better see the shame of a paving stone that requires urgent replacement.
Regarding the inconvenience, in Toledo, around a hundred residents of the historic center took to the streets to protest against the early switching on of Christmas lights. The spokesperson for the opposition group said this a few days ago on ABC: “Christmas is a holiday that everyone celebrates, all cities become beautiful, but one month between the Immaculate Conception and the Epiphany is more than enough. Toledo does not need to attract more people by bringing forward the lighting an additional fortnight. “He doesn’t need it.”
And does Seville need it? What a question, man. Can’t you see it’s beautiful? Here, the City Hall has thrown the house out of the window in the commercial axis that runs from Avenida to La Campana and which also crosses El Salvador. By Sierpes and Tetouan They hung strips of fairy lights like when we were kids with a light ball on the end. The installation company’s propaganda sounds like “bright tears”, but to this wanderer they are more like tricks like those that populated our childhood discourse to refute anything. “And a ham with juice” was the expression that cut short any discussion. And these now, the light jets, are also going in this direction. There is nothing more to say.
On the Avenue, everything you need: colorful trees, giant balls, garlands from one side to the other and pastries on the lampposts of the Archivo de Indias in the Plaza de San Francisco. A little overloaded, excessive, if we allow this passerby to object to what everyone considers to be an exquisite example of good taste. And one observation: this is the first time that the Christmas lights are prettier off than on.
The leaves of small trees planted on Avenue flash with iridescent tones when the sun hits them, releasing beautifully designed iridescent rays. Of course, nicer than the other bill that all Sevillians will have to pay as soon as we see the return of Baltasar; almost two million euros, an increase of 18.5 percent compared to the previous year. We played for almost three euros per person, answering the worrying question that Josep Pla asked himself when he saw the neon lights of New York: and who pays for it?
You and me, dear reader, even if you live on a street without lights. Or as sordid and brief as the one they installed at the Puerta de Carmona. By saying that the sign of the capirotes which announce Lent is more brilliant, everything has already been said. The Paseo de las Delicias and Paseo de Colón do not have a single wrong-colored light bulb. And in Reina Mercedes, the streetlights are on the apartment side but not on the faculty side, where university students already take vacations and it is not a question of spending for the sake of spending.
The panoply of pastry chefs – the least we send in Christmas lighting – is varied: there are stylized ones like those of Caballo and a few little trumpeting angels around the Menéndez Pelayo ring road and elsewhere, there are plain purple lights and a few beautiful garnet and gold rosettesalmost a Gothic cathedral, by Bami. Let’s not beat around the bush, that’s what the light garlands are for which are thrown on the trees with more or less taste: at the Provincial Council, they surrounded the tops of the orange trees and the result is indescribable. Go see.
We will always have Christmas trees left. The one in Santa Justa is visible from everywhere because it is high up, but we take it to the Plaza de San Lorenzo itself, and you will tell me how much the most beautiful corner of Seville needs such tacky things. Oops, we missed the adjective…
-You say that because you are the reincarnation of Mr. Scrooge, Mr. Walker!
-And a ham with flourishes like those in Christmas lights!
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