Walking through Barcelona during the Christmas season and stumbling upon shows and cultural proposals. This is the aim of the city's Christmas program, which includes more than 300 performances by some 80 companies, totaling more than 230 artists. Shows and workshops in Plaça Catalunya, a digital art installation in Universitat, a fir tree of fir trees of 15 meters in Plaça Sant Jaume and a New Year's Eve in Montjuïc, although without its fountain due to the drought, are some of the proposals that the Catalan capital will offer to Barcelona residents and visitors during the Christmas period.
With a program designed for all audiences, the most Christmassy version of Barcelona will offer the traditional markets of Santa Llúcia, Sagrada Família and Reis on Gran Via, as well as the responsible consumption fair in Plaça Catalunya. The Els Sons de Nadal festival will bring 100 activities with 40 groups of diverse musical styles to the ten districts of Barcelona, and the city will have three municipal nativity scenes. The one in Plaça Sant Jaume will consist of a Neapolitan tradition nativity scene by set designer Ignasi Cristià, while the Museu Marès and the Monestir de Pedralbes will house traditional versions of the nativity scene.
Plaça Sant Jaume will also host a fir tree of fir trees: a metal structure that small fir trees up to 4.5 meters will climb, forming a large tree 15 meters high. This dimension leaves Barcelona out of the competition of other cities that rival to offer the tallest Christmas tree. A contest from which the mayor, Jaume Collboni, has distanced himself, as he rules out that it is a race: "Each city expresses its identity, and ours is not to enter into this type of comparison. We are Barcelona," he has stated. And what the city has prioritized in recent years has been to use Christmas as an excuse "to bring culture to the streets, and to make this celebration a cultural manifestation."
Plaça Sant Jaume will have a Neapolitan tradition nativity scene and a fir tree installation that will be 15 meters highThe starting gun for the program will be fired by the Obskené company, with a large-format show that will be the prelude to the lighting of the lights. It will be on Thursday, November 23, in an event on Paseo de Gràcia, to commemorate its 200 years. A tightrope walker allegory about the difficulty of reaching the knowledge of light will mark the beginning of the Christmas season, with the figure of the pioneer Assumpció Català as the guiding thread. Born in Barcelona in 1925 and deceased in 2009, Català was the first professional female astronomer in Spain, as well as a mathematician and popularizer.
The relationship of Barcelona's Christmas with mathematics and astronomy, however improbable it may seem, does not end here. Plaça Universitat will be the setting for a digital installation that, through algorithms and a light tower, will reproduce daytime citizen interactions and movements. It will do so following the trail of the sun and under the name of Analemma: the infinity-shaped curve that the star describes if its daily position is captured throughout a year at the same point. The piece is part of the celebration of Sónar's 30th anniversary, and has been developed with the company Glassworks.
And from Plaça Universitat, to Plaça Catalunya: it will host the Barcelona Christmas Festival from December 16 to 29 with different proposals depending on the time slot. In the mornings, families and children will conquer a square full of activities and workshops focused on paper and with an analog photobooth; afternoons will be for music and dance, circus and even parkour shows, and nights will give way to large format. From 8 p.m., the Agrupación Señor Serrano will offer a show that questions conventions and tensions of Christmas meals.
Christmas in the districts
The Christmas program will also reach the neighborhoods of the Catalan capital, especially with the 100 activities and 40 groups of Sons del Món, and with proposals from the districts themselves. "From Plaça Catalunya to Torre Baró; from Besòs to Sants; from the markets to the commercial hubs, in Barcelona there will be a more citizen Christmas than ever," proclaimed Collboni when presenting the program together with the manager of the Institut de Cultura de Barcelona (Icub), Oriol Martí, and representatives of the companies of the most outstanding shows.
The calendar will continue with the New Year's Eve celebration in Montjuïc with a show by the Groupe F company that will exclude the Magic Fountain due to the drought, as already happened with the last Piromusical of La Mercè. The new year will bring with it the opening of new activities linked to the Three Kings: the Toy Factory in the Sant Andreu district and, as one of this year's new proposals, a royal camp of King Balthazar in the Casa de l'Aigua de Trinitat Vella. The program will again include the Children's Festival, which recovered its name last year, and will also do so with a new detail: it will have for the first time a space for babies and children up to four years old.
The Three Kings parade will repeat last year's itinerary, and will add another novelty: the Three Kings will greet the Barcelonians who come to the beaches of Somorrostro and Barceloneta from the Paleibot Santa Eulàlia, a vessel from which they traditionally arrive in the city. This new greeting, scheduled for the morning before Three Kings' Day, will give visibility to the upcoming America's Cup, which will be held in an apparently distant August 2024.
The proposals make up a Christmas program that positions Barcelona as a destination for these holidays, both for visitors and for Barcelonians themselves.The maritime coast will also be a protagonist during the Christmas holidayswith the Fira de Nadal del Port, in Port Vell from December 5 to January 7. It will feature an old carousel, a train, children's activities, and an ecological ice rink. Thus, there will be a rink by the sea, and another in the mountains, though not made of ice. Visitors will be able to skate again in Tibidabo on polyethylene panels that simulate an ice rink without energy consumption. These proposals make up a Christmas program that positions Barcelona as a destination for these holidays, both for visitors and for the people of Barcelona themselves.