Festive gloom

They didn´t want to give the exact time for fears over Covid and mass gatherings. But large crowds, with small children and babies, did start gathering at 6p.m. It was a cold night and it was a long wait. By about 7p.m. many families with young children started heading home, bitterly disappointed that they hadn´t seen the lights.

At 8p.m., the festive lights at the El Corte Ingles department store were turned on (as planned and as advertised) but still the city council´s lights remained off. By this stage there was quite alot of unhappy people about. Finally at 8.10p.m. the lights went on. If the council had said that the official switch on was going to be at 8p.m. they would have been far fewer disappointed people and the event would have been more like a party than just a long wait.

I can see some logic in what the council wanted to do, but it backfired badly. People were always going to gather to see the lights whatever warnings were given out by the council. Saying that the switch-on would be between 6p.m. and 8p.m. made little or no difference, it just added to the confusion and probably resulted in even greater gatherings of people. This was a poor effort by the council who should know better.