It may feel strange for us Northern Europeans – how can it possibly be nearly Christmas in Marbella when we’re by the beach and it’s 20° in the sunshine?! However, it is definitely around the corner and we are getting quietly excited!
One sure sign that Santa is doing his last minute Black Friday panic buying and will be here shortly – this evening Málaga switches on their Christmas illuminations. This has fast become a tradition and a favourite part of the run up to the festive season, being the third largest light show in Spain after Madrid and Barcelona.
Last year for the first time music was added to the lights with a brilliant twice-nightly show accompanied by three favourite seasonal songs. The light show doesn’t come cheap – the estimated cost last year was over €500,000, with the 3,200 strings of LED lights and 344 glittering moons and stars weighing more than 25 tonnes!
This year we know that the theme will be to transform the main pedestrianised street of Calle Larios into a cathedral and the son et lumiére show will be enlivened with Boney M’s Merry Christmas, Wizards in Winter by the Trans-Siberian Orchestra and Christmas Festival performed by Boston Pops. We can’t wait!
Don’t forget Christmas in Marbella
Marbella is well worth a visit too, with it’s own illuminations that fill the Old Town and line the main thoroughfare of Avda. Riccardo Soriano. It is just as beautiful in the daytime, with the Ayuntamiento carrying out a campaign of planting the traditional poinsettia plants in the verges, roundabouts and flowerbeds giving deep splashes of crimson throughout the town.
If you have a little one in the family, be sure to visit La Cañada, where Santa himself sits in residence under the huge Christmas tree – until after the big day, when his post is taken by the Three Kings, who deliver yet more sweets and presents!
The holiday season in the sun really does deliver the festive hit that we look forward to!
