Christmas, renewed Christmas. Except in the installation of the lights. The same company that since 1973 has placed the colored light bulbs that illuminate the streets of Madrid from the end of November to January 6 will do it again this year in which the City Council of the capital has already anticipated that there will be changes in the celebration of the parties regarding the programming of Manuela Carmena.

Illuminations Ximénez has once again been the winning company and in fact the only participant in the public tender of the contract to assemble and disassemble the ornaments, chains and firs powered by electricity. For doing so, he will receive a total of three million euros, some 667,000 euros more - 27.7% - than last season.

This increase in the budget is due to the fact that the new government team in charge of the Palacio de Cibeles, a coalition formed by Cs and PP, has decided to extend the lights "to a significant number of new locations . " In addition, as they point out in the Works and Equipments Area, the great novelty will be «the incorporation of motifs with traditionally Christmas designs that reflect the meaning of these dates».

The lighting installation is carried out by means of a biannual framework agreement that precisely expires now in 2019. At the Madrid City Council they confirm that the specifications are already being prepared for the processing of the new one, which will be tendered “in the coming months” , but they do not reveal whether they will introduce measures to try to avoid what the opposition parties in past legislatures described as a "de facto monopoly."

In addition to the usual locations, Illuminations Ximénez will have to install ornaments and chains for the first time at the entrances to the Plaza Mayor , in Cibeles and Neptune and in various locations in the districts of Centro, Moncloa-Aravaca, Salamanca, Arganzuela and Tetuán, all of them within the perimeter of the M-30.

This year as a novelty there will also be illuminated trees in the surroundings of Atocha, the Quevedo roundabouts, Emilio Castelar, Rubén Darío and Ruiz Jiménez; the squares of Oriente, Alonso Martínez, Castilla, Cuzco, Lima, Cardinal Cisneros, Marqués de Salamanca and Legazpi ; Arturo Soria and Montalbán and Madrid Río streets.

«The project responds to the demand of citizens and will contribute, together with the rest of the municipal Christmas program, to the tourist and commercial impulse of the city, promoting economic activity and the beautification of public spaces through a unique and innovative lighting, but at the same time sustainable thanks to the use of new technologies ”, they point out in the team led by Mayor José Luis Martínez-Almeida. In fact, although the company that puts the lights remains the same for 46 years at this time has had to replace the classic bulbs with LED models.

Among the novelties of the upcoming Christmas is the return of the figurative nativity scene to the Puerta de Alcalá that «Carmena punished in a warehouse», as denounced by the head of Works and Equipment, the popular Paloma García Romero, at the July press conference in which announced its recovery. There will also be other luminous births at the gates of Toledo and San Vicente, the Plaza Mayor and the Segovia viaduct.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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