If you walk around Kawasaki these days (lucky you) you will probably come across an image that will catch your attention, one that has little to do with Japanese traditions and landscapes or with the avalanche of tourists that the country of the rising sun suffers. What will probably make you jump is finding a sign in the middle of Kanagawa announcing Christmas in Vigo, a mupi with a photo of XXL luminous tree of the Galician city and a message that invites you to travel the 11,000 kilometers that separate both towns.
It could be an anecdote (one more related to the Vigo festivals), but that image tells us a lot about the fever for decoration Christmas that Spain experiences.
Vigo Christmas in Japan? That’s how it is. It was the mayor of Vigo himself, Abel Caballero, who was in charge of showing it on networks. On Tuesday he hung up a photo in which a promotional poster for the Olympic Christmas is seen in what looks like the street of some Japanese city. The advertisement shows garlands, the XXL luminous tree erected in the heart of Vigo and a message in Japanese.
“Christmas in Vigo is already in Japan,” Caballero wrote in his tweetwhich is already on its way to 220,000 views and 650 likes.
Is it a surprise? Not really. In October Knight has already advanced that this year Christmas in Vigo would be announced with 820 posters distributed throughout (almost) the entire world. Most of those mupis (629) would be distributed across thirty Spanish cities, especially Madrid, Malaga, Bilbao and Seville, and another 142 were reserved for neighboring Portugal. The rest would travel the world.
The Council boasted that it would take 15 to Paris, 10 to Rome, the same number to New York and 14 to Kawasaki. “This time Christmas will be in Japan for the first time.”
Is it the first time? More or less. The jump to Asia is a novelty, but in 2024 Vigo already surprised to some tourists with promotional posters distributed in cities such as London, Paris, Rome or even the Big Apple. “I thought it was a mirage. I was seeing this in the distance and I couldn’t believe it,” joked in X Héctora reporter who encountered a mupi in the middle of Manhattan that read, in large golden letters, “The World’s best Christmas is in Vigo.”
How much do these posters cost? In October, when he announced the new campaign, Caballero assured that at least this year’s is “free” and “costs nothing” to the City Council. Last year the Vigo newspaper Metropilitango.gal pointed that the mupis had been installed after reaching an agreement with JCDecaux.
But… Who visits Vigo? If we base ourselves on studies on hotel occupancy by the INE, basically Spaniards and visitors from other areas of the EU, especially Portugal. Of the 537,500 travelers counted throughout 2024, 62.7% resided in Spain and 23.9% in one of the remaining EU countries. Of these, Portugal was the most popular market, with almost 77,000 tourists.
Among the countries analyzed by the INE, the United States (14,800), Germany (11,800) and Italy (11,200) followed, far behind. From Japan, the market on which the City Council has now set its eyes, only 700 visitors who ended up staying in hotel establishments in the city.
And at Christmas? The photo is not very different from the rest of the year. According to the data provided By the Vigo City Council, during Christmas 2022-2023 tourism was mostly national. That campaign was still marked by the shadow of the pandemic, but the data is conclusive: the City Council assures that some 5.3 million visitors arrived in Vigo and that the main foreign nationality was Portuguese, with 140,118 people, 2.6% of the total. French, British, Italians and Americans totaled 68,400.
The hotel occupancy data from the INE show a somewhat different picture. In December the institute counted only 62,900 touristsof which 62% were Spanish and 30.5% Portuguese. The sum of French, Italians, British and Americans in fact barely exceeded 1,100. It is not surprising if one takes into account the limited supply of connections that Peinador, Vigo airport, has (right now Aena reports only five routes).
Is there Japanese tourism? If we base ourselves on the INE, no. In December 2024, the INE did not count not a single Japanese visitor in the hotels of Vigo. In addition to how complicated and expensive it is to fly between Japan and the Galician city, this absence is largely explained by the behavior of Japanese tourists.
Although the country is recording a record arrival of foreign tourists, the number of Japanese traveling abroad still quite below from pre-pandemic data. In fact in June Turespaña I trusted in which the influx of Japanese to Spain recovers its “pre-COVID” levels this year.
Why advertise there then? In view of these data, why has Vigo distributed 14 mupis by Kawasaki and 10 in New York? Does Caballero aspire to attract tourists who live on other continents, thousands of kilometers away? The Consistory speaks to show Galician Christmas to potential tourists from other countries, but the measure is probably explained with another word: virality.
Caballero’s tweet is a good example. In just a few days his photo of mupi has achieved several hundreds of thousands of views on X and has made headlines on media from Spain. Just as their estimates do about what Christmas means for Vigo: between 800 and 1 billion euros of economic return with a deployment of 6.3 million “visitors” in just two months, which is more than the total number of tourists who stay in hotels in Galicia in a year.
The 14 mupis of Kawasaki may see them only a small portion of the 1.5 million people who reside in that Japanese city, but of course they have reached, via networks and media, thousands of people who live in the market that really interests Vigo: the rest of Spain and (especially) Galicia.
Does virality matter? Yes. Beyond the million-dollar figures handled by the City Council, Christmas in Vigo is a clear example of tourist success created by virality. In December 2012 they were staying in Vigo 18,500 travelers. Last year there were 63,000. To them we must also add the visitors who do not spend the night in the city or those who do so outside of hotels, in tourist apartments.
What has happened since 2012 for Christmas in Vigo to go from being unknown to a mass phenomenon? Many LED lights and something else: media exposure. The first milestone arrived in 2018when Caballero starred in a press conference in which he announced that that Christmas Vigo would go all out with nine million LEDs. His smug tone and rhetoric caught the attention of the national media and even made Caballero a trending topics.
And since then? That episode in 2018 probably marked the Vigo Christmas phenomenon, which since then has continued to gain weight year after year due to interventions that stand out for their ability to sneak into the prime time television: speeches in which Caballero combine English with Galician, ‘pikes’ with the mayor of Madrid, challenges to New Yorkdecorations that begin to be assembled in the middle of JulyXXL luminous trees that never stop gain height… The formula works and has gradually given shape to a Christmas that owes almost as much to that rhetoric as to the street display of LEDs.
Why this interest? The phenomenon not only benefits to merchants and hoteliers. It has also allowed the mayor himself to take advantage of tourism promotion in relation to assets such as Xacobeo, usually capitalized by the Xunta de Galicia. Indeed Gentleman presume that Christmas attracts more people to Vigo in a couple of months than the Camino de Santiago does during a year.
Is it effective? Does the bet work? For now, Vigo has been joined by other cities that have embarked on the christmas decoration feverboth in the rest of the Spanish geography, and on the other side of the border, in the north of Portugal.
Images | Abel Caballero (X) and Council of Vigo
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