Countdown to Malaga’s spectacular Christmas lightshow

This year the Christmas lightshow in Malaga will feature a “luminous forest” with decorations made up of 270,000 individual LED lights. The Christmas countdown starts with the switch on at 7pm on November 24.

Calle Larios will keep the 16 “Celestial Angels” that were used for the first time last year and the total budget for the lights in the city centre alone is €1.4 million. This year the main novelty will be in the Alameda Principal, which will become a “luminous forest” with an interlaced system of lights that will decorate the ficus trees.

There will be luminous figures of the Three Wise Men in the Alcazaba tunnel, trees with trumpets in Calle Echegaray, Christmas balls in Plaza del Carbón and a decorative tree in Plaza Jerónimo Cuervo, next to the Cervantes Theatre.

Calle Larios Show

This year there will be no Mariah Carey and her famous “All I want for Christmas is you“. Instead, Malaga residents and visitors will be treated to a light show featuring: “Jingle Bells” by Andre Rieu and the Johann Strauss Orchestra; “We wish you a Merry Christmas”, “Carol of the bells” by Pentatonix; “Epic Christmas” and “Towards Bethlehem goes a donkey”. For the first time this year, on December, 27 and 28, verdiales (a typical flamenco style of music from the province of Malaga) will be played as a nod to Malaga’s traditional culture.

There will be 3 performances each day at 6.30pm, 8pm and 10pm. The lights will be switched on every day at 6.30pm. Malaga City Council is maintaining the two-hour cut in the lighting, a measure it adopted last year to raise awareness of energy saving, so that Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Sunday the lights will be on until midnight and on Thursday, Friday and Saturday they will be on until 2am. On December 24 and 31 they will be on until 6am.

The Cathedral

The façade of the south side of the Cathedral’s Mocha tower will once again feature the projection of video mapping or architectural projection. This year, the building will be the setting for the story entitled “Angel of Light“, a luminous show that will tell the story of an angel through the fusion of images and reproductions of gigantic stained glass windows, a show lasting 8 minutes by the company Firefly Events. The shows will take place at 7pm, 8.30pm and 10pm every day from December 1 to January 4.

Another unique spot in the centre of Malaga will be Calle San Juan, which will be divided into 3 different illuminated areas. Firstly, the “luminous tinsel” area, with paths of golden tinsel lit along the street, with an ultra-warm light in parallel formations. “Luminous tears” will occupy the central part, with giant vertical micro-LEDs in the form of batons. Finally, the “magic cave“: a cavern of lights through which passers-by will be able to walk, which features 300 linear metres of hanging micro-LED garlands.

The streets of Molina Lario and the 11 cross streets of Calle Larios will be illuminated with chandeliers. They can be found in Sancha de Lara, Don Juan Díaz, Bolsa, Strachan, Moreno Monroy, Martínez, Alarcón Luján, Manuel Pérez Bryan, Álvarez Fonseca, Marín García and Liborio García, for which 76 three-dimensional lamps have been installed.

Numbers

The installation of the Christmas lights in the Centro Histórico will cost €1.4 million this year, the same amount as last year. Throughout the city there are more than 500 streets decorated, 86 of which are in the historic centre, and in total there are around two and a half million points of light.