Lights, Yet Darkness Remains
I finally got around to going to Vigo this past Friday. There is an art store there, that, while it's not fully comprehensive, still has more material than the small ones in my radius. I also wanted to walk a little along busy city streets in the largest city of Galicia. A few hours in the morning wasn't enough, though, so I'll probably return during Christmas vacation.
What caught my attention the most, even though it was daylight, was all the Christmas lights in all the streets in the center. There was a tangle of cables and designs in wire overhead that defied the eye. On a large corner where the pedestrianized main shopping street began there was a large round structure that seemed to be a tree bauble. Along that pedestrian-only street there were many winter decorations, as well. They were comprised of a mound of earth, with real fir trees, and different structures, such as snowmen. One had small house structures that were still being set up or fixed. But those mounds had been seeded with lawn grass, and then sprinkled with spray-on snow. How much they had cost, I don't know, but the grass seed isn't cheap, nor are the fir trees and the labor to set it up.
What did reach astronomical proportions were the Christmas lights. In the middle of September crews had begun to put them up along the 307 streets that were included in the Christmas plan. In all, just in lights, the city of Vigo will spend well over 800,000 euros this year. The company that got the job signed a contract for five years, which will amount to 4.5 millions euros over that time. The mayor, Abel Caballero, whose idea this was, claimed the Christmas lighting this year would put New York, Tokyo, London, Paris, and Berlin to shame. The evening they were turned on became a media circus in Vigo, though I didn't bother to find the live stream on internet, and just glanced at the news when they mentioned it. The mayor even joked, when announcing the display back in September, that the lights would probably be seen from space.
One wonders why, when the world is on the brink of another recession, when light contamination is changing the habits of different species, both urban and rural, the person in charge of a large city with so many different challenges, would invest so much in something so ephemeral. There have been critics, of course. Many think that a portion of that money could well have been invested in social spending, especially when the neighborhood of O Calvario is one of the fifty-two poorest neighborhoods in all of Spain. With an overall poverty rate of over 17%, perhaps those critics are right.
Yet humans are suckers for such things. When I was in the art store, it was quite busy. One of the clerks mentioned it with a client he was helping. He said that last year at this time there hadn't been as many people as this year. The client mentioned it must be because of the lights. The clerk agreed. I was thinking, Huh? The lights. So, people come shopping to Vigo in the daytime just because of the lights and decorations? Are we so stupid? Yes, I suppose we are.
I left around lunchtime. I had classes in the afternoon, and even if I hadn't, I probably wouldn't have hung around till evening to see everything as bright as day. I don't much like driving in the dark anymore. Though some people seem to live in the dark, no matter how much light surrounds them.
What caught my attention the most, even though it was daylight, was all the Christmas lights in all the streets in the center. There was a tangle of cables and designs in wire overhead that defied the eye. On a large corner where the pedestrianized main shopping street began there was a large round structure that seemed to be a tree bauble. Along that pedestrian-only street there were many winter decorations, as well. They were comprised of a mound of earth, with real fir trees, and different structures, such as snowmen. One had small house structures that were still being set up or fixed. But those mounds had been seeded with lawn grass, and then sprinkled with spray-on snow. How much they had cost, I don't know, but the grass seed isn't cheap, nor are the fir trees and the labor to set it up.
What did reach astronomical proportions were the Christmas lights. In the middle of September crews had begun to put them up along the 307 streets that were included in the Christmas plan. In all, just in lights, the city of Vigo will spend well over 800,000 euros this year. The company that got the job signed a contract for five years, which will amount to 4.5 millions euros over that time. The mayor, Abel Caballero, whose idea this was, claimed the Christmas lighting this year would put New York, Tokyo, London, Paris, and Berlin to shame. The evening they were turned on became a media circus in Vigo, though I didn't bother to find the live stream on internet, and just glanced at the news when they mentioned it. The mayor even joked, when announcing the display back in September, that the lights would probably be seen from space.
One wonders why, when the world is on the brink of another recession, when light contamination is changing the habits of different species, both urban and rural, the person in charge of a large city with so many different challenges, would invest so much in something so ephemeral. There have been critics, of course. Many think that a portion of that money could well have been invested in social spending, especially when the neighborhood of O Calvario is one of the fifty-two poorest neighborhoods in all of Spain. With an overall poverty rate of over 17%, perhaps those critics are right.
Yet humans are suckers for such things. When I was in the art store, it was quite busy. One of the clerks mentioned it with a client he was helping. He said that last year at this time there hadn't been as many people as this year. The client mentioned it must be because of the lights. The clerk agreed. I was thinking, Huh? The lights. So, people come shopping to Vigo in the daytime just because of the lights and decorations? Are we so stupid? Yes, I suppose we are.
I left around lunchtime. I had classes in the afternoon, and even if I hadn't, I probably wouldn't have hung around till evening to see everything as bright as day. I don't much like driving in the dark anymore. Though some people seem to live in the dark, no matter how much light surrounds them.
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