Friday, 12 December 2025, 14:35
La Garnatilla, a village on the Granada province’s Costa Tropical, has completed the installation of lights, decorations and themed scenes that each year attract many visitors, earning it the unofficial but well-deserved title of “the most Christmasy village on the coast”.
Christmas is a project that everyone gets involved in in La Garnatilla and that begins almost as soon as the previous one ends, an exercise in creativity in which children, grandparents, parents, newcomers and entire families participate to make their village look like no other.
All this is nothing more and nothing less than the result of months of work, of entire afternoons spent folding fabric, cutting wood, knitting wool, recycling bottles, meeting after long days of work and always looking for new ways to surprise visitors.
Alhambra beer tree
This year, the streets are once again transformed into a Christmas scene that surpasses last year’s Among all the new features, the large tree made of Alhambra beer bottles and measures over two and a half metres tall. It is a green, shiny and perfectly symmetrical structure that has become the great reference point for this Christmas.
The creator is Ana Vílchez, a lifelong resident, who admits that the inspiration came about almost by chance: “We saw that 1925 beer was celebrating its 100th anniversary and we thought it would be nice to do something special, a tribute to a brand that is so much a part of Granada and so much a part of us,” she says as she puts one of the last bottles in place.
The Alhambra beer Christmas tree
MJAT
The tree began to take shape in July. Ana and her family saved bottles for months, cleaning them one by one and placing them until they had the three hundred needed to make the tree. A few metres from the tree is Cecilia Vilchez, whose talent is undoubtedly crochet and glass. Cecilia proudly shows off her picture made with glass collected from the beach, which depicts the nativity scene and a cosy place with a fireplace. She has also crocheted a two-metre tree with dahlias.
Snowball fight
Rocío Ortega and her family have taken it upon themselves this year to decorate their street like a snowy landscape, with snowmen, little houses and a small corner that looks like it has been taken straight out of Lapland, while the Grinch sits on a chair looking grumpily at passers-by.
Among the most original decorations is that of Shelly, an English resident who has been living on the Costa Tropical for 30 years and who this year wanted to bring a little piece of her childhood winters. Hers is a very “mischievous” scene, depicting a snowball fight between children created by hand from eight-litre bottles.
According to Alfredo Ortega, the locals start in September and meet in the afternoon. Everything is made from recycled materials: water bottles are transformed into goats, sticks from the countryside become trees, old fabrics are turned into scarves and fruit boxes are converted into train carriages. The decorations will remain in place throughout the festive season, making La Garnatilla one of the festive highlights on the Costa Tropical.