From Wednesday, February 14 through Saturday, February 17, Guadalajara will glow bright as ignited phosphorus when the city celebrates its second annual “GDL Luz” festival.
The festival’s organizers are expanding the event’s geographical purview this year, as they expect attendance to top 2017’s by around 300,000 people, for an estimated total of 800,000 attendees.
The four-day visual orgy will see the Centro Historico’s pantheon of stately colonial buildings and monuments explode with moving color, projected on their facades by state-of-the-art “mapping technology.” Buildings to be draped in this splendid raiment of shifting images will include the cathedral, Teatro Degollado, Hospicio Cabañas, Plaza Fundadores, the Rotonda de Jaliscienses Ilustres, and many more.
Accompanying this visual feast will be presentations of live music. This year’s headline attraction is Guadalajara-born guitarist Paco Renteria. In addition, a variety of gastronomic offerings will keep spectators fat and sassy while they stroll among this psychedelic fantasia.
“GDL Luz” is the city’s version of similar events put on by cities around the world for years, including Sydney, Lyon, London, Amsterdam and Kobe. The festival is timed, as it was last year, to coincide with the founding of Guadalajara, February 14, 1542.