Trece Árboles de Madrid

(Thirteen Trees of Madrid) Obviously, you don't get to know a city all at once. I lived in/near Los Angeles for nearly 25 years and only just got past scratching the surface. So it should have come as no surprise to me to discover something new and special about Madrid after living here for just over three months. 

Madrid is a lovely city -- prettier than Los Angeles by a far sight, although that's not saying much.¹  Thanks in no small part to our good friend Carlos III,² it has broad boulevards, green gardens, and lovely architecture.  

But the city makes a special effort to beautify itself for the Christmas season,³ and when I say "makes a special effort," I really do mean "special". Above is the official map produced by the city of Madrid showing all of the locations of the city-sponsored holiday decorations. Each little icon you see means that the city put up some sort of holiday lighting there. Going to the site and clicking on any of the icons will explain further what the decoration is. 

The ones I'm focused on this year are the trees. Right when the holiday season started in late November, we saw this tree being put up just steps from our apartment (above is the actual view from our window). Going about the city on our daily rounds we started seeing other trees. I wondered about the trees, did some research, came across the Ayuntamiento de Madrid official holiday lights decoration page, and learned that there are thirteen⁴ of them placed all over the city, all with different styles and colors of lighting. So I've made it my quest to track down and photograph all of them before the holiday season ends. I've seen less than half so far, but the Christmas season doesn't end here in Spain until Jan. 6 (Epiphany),⁵ so I have a little time left.

I made my way up towards Puerta del Sol, passing these angels decorating the Glorieta de Atocha.

Continuing up Paseo del Prado, here we are in front of the museum itself, where you can absolutely drown yourself in Velazquez, including a giant statue of el maestro right in front of the building. Perhaps Velazquez' most famous painting is "Las Meninas", a moment-in-time snapshot of the mid-17th century Spanish Habsburg court. The hairstyle of the time (or at least for Infanta Margarita Teresa) was sort of an odd bowl-cut-shaped thing.⁶  So this is a sort of a Christmastime illuminated "Las Meninas" tribute. 

I had to start with the granddaddy of the light works, here in Sol opposite the equestrian statue of good old Carlos III. Puerta del Sol is the Times Square of Madrid, where instead of "Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve with Ryan Seacrest" they wait for the giant clock on the Real Casa de Correos to strike the hour:

There are projectors mounted opposite the building broadcasting a changing array of colors and patterns. When the clock strikes midnight, the custom is to eat a whole grape at each toll of the bell; you can imagine the hilarity that results as people try to choke down one grape per second.⁷  The grocery stores actually sell pre-packaged sets of grapes so you don't have to buy a whole bunch.  

And it's not just the big plazas and glorietas⁸  that the city beautifies. These photos are just a sample of the lights on the streets off Sol. Look up at that map again. See all of the icons? All of the little colored lines are streets decorated like this, with a different style for every street.

Moving through the city, I found myself wondering why the city chose the sites they did for the Christmas trees. In some places the venue seemed suitable and obvious.  Like here, for example -- right in front of the iconic Metropolis Building on Gran Via.

....or this one, on Plaza de Pedro Zerolo in Chueca. Pedro Zerolo was one of the most well-known activists for the LGBTQ+ movement in fighting for marriage equality in Spain, and the plaza is sort of Madrid's equivalent to Stonewall or the Black Cat Tavern -- it's where all of the Pride Week parades and celebrations start. Perhaps it should have been a R-O-Y-G-B-V tree, but the I think the leaf motif is lovely.

Other locations confused me, at least at first. This is Plaza Elíptica, which is a major bus/metro transport interchange in the southern part of the city. It's not a particularly scenic or beautiful site; just a round spot with a few trees in the middle of a bunch of busy streets and transit stations. But I did a little research: Plaza Elíptica is one of the busiest nodes in the city. It connects most of the southern suburbs -- traditionally the least wealthy parts of the city -- to the center. And apparently for the last decade or so the ayuntamiento has made a conscious effort to be more egalitarian in its holiday decorations, to beautify the whole city and not just the fairytale historic core. So what I originally saw as a lonely little tree becomes more of a hopeful statement. 

This one -- or at least this picture -- might be my favorite so far. It's on Avenida del Padre Piquer in Latina, a working- and lower-middle-class district way out in the southwest part of the city, beyond the M-30 ring road and a good forty minutes away from our apartment, even late at night on a weekday. Latina (not to be confused with the hip and trendy "La Latina" smack in the middle of town) is not anywhere the tourists go, but thousands of residents walk Avenida del Padre Piquer every day. When I got there, the median and tree were as you see them: Alone, quiet, with nothing to keep them company except the all-night farmacia, a McDonald's...and the three girls in the lower right of the picture. The temperature was low -- high 30s Fahrenheit -- but these three had their boombox out and were practicing a Christmas dance routine. It certainly wasn't any sort of performance or busking; there was no hat for coins, and Avenida del Padre Piquer late on a weeknight is hardly a place where you're going to get much pedestrian traffic. So this otherwise deserted little plaza with its brilliantly lit Christmas tree was just their practice spot. And despite the cold, the dark, and the loneliness, they had big smiles on their face as they danced. 

....so that's my Trece Árboles de Madrid odyssey so far. I'm really looking forward to what insights I'll get from visiting the rest of them. If it's worthwhile, maybe I'll do a "Part II" post. ¡Felices fiestas!

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¹Don't misunderstand me. I have a complete and unabashed love for what I still consider as my adopted home city; when people ask me where I'm from, I proudly say "Los Angeles," not "Florida." But while L.A. is situated among and near some breathtaking scenery, and while it has countless wonderful, exciting, and striking aspects, its current visual state is the result of laissez-faire urban planning gone mad: A few barely-preserved Art Deco and Modernist older buildings sprinkled among freeways, hastily-constructed strip malls, and undistinguished glass-and-steel boxes. In short, it's not winning any beauty contests.↩︎

² See FN3 of my earlier blog entry (https://www.robbandamy.com/2025/11/manifestacion.html) for a shout-out to Carlos III. ↩︎

³I agonized a bit over this phrase. "Christmas season" is more concise and probably carries the meaning to my -- let's face it -- overwhelmingly Judeo-Christian-Western audience. But no matter where you stand on the subject of Jesus-as-son-of-God, you have to face facts: He wasn't born anywhere near Dec. 25th. No Judean shepherd in his right mind would have been "keeping his sheep" out in the open in the winter. Celts, Britons, Gauls, Teutons -- not to mention the Romans themselves -- had been celebrating the winter solstice by lighting candles, dancing around trees, celebrating with feasts, and giving gifts long before they ever heard about Jesus of Nazareth, a tradition which the early Catholic Church chose to piggyback upon when the 'official' date of Jesus' birth was decided nearly 300 years later. So feel free to substitute "Christmas season" with "holiday season," "Yuletide," "winter solstice," or whatever other description your theological bent deems appropriate. ↩︎

⁴I don't know the significance of this number. Given Spain's deeply Catholic history, I wouldn't discount the idea that there is some significance to the number 13 in the Catholic tradition somehow connected to the Christmas season....or it could just be that the city only ever commissioned that number of giant illuminated trees. ↩︎

⁵Yep - Spanish kids have to wait until Jan. 6 to get their presents. They commemorate the gift-giving visit of the Three Kings (Reyes Magos) in addition to December 25. In some cities, there is a Cabalgata de los Reyes Magos parade on January 5 with the Three Kings riding through cities and towns distributing sweets, although I haven't looked to see if there will be one in Madrid. ↩︎

⁶For Velazquez' disturbing true-to-life pictures of the Habsburgs, including the infanta with her weird hairdo, see my previous blog https://robbtravelsandtalks.wordpress.com/2023/08/26/day-3-la-historia-de-madrid/.↩︎

⁷Current popular wisdom says that you should peel the grapes beforehand to make for easier swallowing.↩︎

⁸A glorieta is a big roundabout where several streets converge, usually with some sort of monument, fountain, statue, or green space at its center. They do double duty as both traffic roundabouts for vehicles and public spaces.↩︎